J.  ELLIOT  ROS 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


ACO 


15  78 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 


*1  SEEK  WOBK NOT  CHARITY  I" 


THE 

RIGHT  TO  WORK 


BY 


J.  ELLIOT  ROSS,  C.S.R,  Ph.D. 

LECTURER   IN   ETHICS,   NEWMAN   HALL, 
UNIVERSITY   OF  TEXAS 


"Why  stand  you  here  all  the  day  idle  ?    They  say 
to  him:  because  no  man  hath  hired  us." 

—Matt.  XX,  6-7. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY 


Copyright,  19171  by 
THE  DEVIN-ADAIR  COMPANY 

437  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 
401  West  Twenty-first  Street,  Austin,  Texas 


All  rights  reserved 


Cum  permissu  superiorum. 

John  J.  Hughes,  C.S.P., 

Superior-General. 

IMPRIMATUR. 

^  Nicholas  Alotsius  Gallagher, 

Bishop  of  Galveston. 


tfWfVERSiTY OF so::!:::^::  c ,:.: :::::a l:brars 


In  time  of  war  prepare  for  peace !  When 
the  unprecedented  demand  for  labor 
caused  by  war  orders  ceases,  we  shall 
undoubtedly  experience  the  evils  of  un- 
employment as  we  have  in  the  past.  We 
should  not  live  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  un- 
sound war  prosperity,  but  should  now  be 
making  provision  to  lessen  the  shock  that 
will  come  when  we  are  suddenly  forced  to 
adjust  ourselves  to  peace  conditions.  Let 
us  not  forget  the  winter  scenes  of  1914-15 
and  of  other  years  when  we  saw  our  army 
of  unemployed  mobilized. 


1  <4kbliOi 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAoa 

The  Extent  and  Evils  of  Unemployment  .  .  1 
Lack  of  information  as  to  extent  of  unemploy- 
ment— There  should  be  a  government  survey  of 
unemployment  at  once — Private  estimates  place 
the  number  out  of  work  in  winter  1915-16  at 
2,000,000 — Unemployment  is  a  normal  phe- 
nomenon of  industry — How  unemployment  af- 
fects those  out  of  work,  their  dependents, 
charitably  minded  people,  business  men,  and  the 
whole  country. 

CHAPTER  II 

Every  Man  Has  a  Right  to  Work  ....  22 
Remedy  for  unemployment  is  not  charity — It  is 
a  recognition  that  each  man  has  a  right  to 
work — Opinion  of  the  moralists — The  correlative 
duty  to  furnish  the  opportunity  rests  upon  the 
State. 

CHAPTER  III 

The  State's  Duty  to  the  Temporarily  Unemployed      43 
The  unemployed  divide  into  those  temporarily 


vi  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

out  of  work  and  those  unemployable — For  the 
first  there  should  be  employment  bureaus;  co- 
ordination of  seasonal  occupations;  and  unem- 
ployment insurance. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The    State's    Duty    to   the   Unemployable — the 

Capable 63 

There  is  no  place  in  competitive  industry  for 
many  capable  men — Yet  there  is  work  to  be 
done — The  State  (municipalities,  States,  and 
Federal  authorities)  should  create  opportunity 
to  work — This  might  be  cutting  wood,  breaking 
stone,  draining  swamps,  building  roads,  etc. 

CHAPTER  V 

The    State's    Duty   to    the   Unemployable — the 

Incapable  82 

Many  can't  be  employed  in  private  industry  be- 
cause of  some  defect,  physical  or  moral — State 
should  recognize  them  as  a  class  apart — Pre- 
vent their  production  as  far  as  possible — But 
there  will  always  be  some,  and  for  them  special 
institutions  should  be  created — Already  there 
are  Good  Shepherd  Homes  for  women,  and 
there  should   be  similar  ones   for  men. 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  VI 

PAGE 

Duty  of  the  Individual 102 

While  the  duty  corresponding  to  a  man's  right  to 
work  rests  upon  the  State,  each  individual  must 
do  what  he  can  to  influence  governmental 
action — We  have  developed  our  physical  re- 
sources, now  we  should  develop  our  hmiian 
engines  and  dynamos. 


Work  is  the  mission  of  man  in  this  Earth.  A  day 
is  ever  struggling  forward,  a  day  will  arrive  in  some 
approximate  degree,  when  he  who  has  no  work  to  do, 
by  whatever  name  he  may  be  named,  will  not  find  it 
good  to  show  himself  in  our  quarter  of  the  Solar  Sys- 
tem. .  .  . 

Can  the  poor  man  that  is  willing  to  work,  always 
find  work,  and  live  by  his  work  ?  Statistic  Inquiry  .  .  . 
has  no  answer  to  give.  Legislation  presupposes  the 
answer — to  be  in  the  affirmative.  A  large  postulate; 
which  should  have  been  made  a  proposition  of ;  which 
should  have  been  demonstrated,  made  indubitable  to 
all  persons! 

A  man  willing  to  work,  and  unable  to  find  it,  is 
perhaps  the  saddest  sight  that  Fortune's  inequality 
exhibits  under  this  sun.  Burns  expresses  feelingly 
what  thoughts  it  gave  him:  a  poor  man  seeking  work; 
seeking  leave  to  toil  that  he  might  be  fed  and  shel- 
tered !  That  he  might  but  be  put  on  a  level  with  the 
four-footed  workers  of  the  Planet  which  is  his ! 

There  is  not  a  horse  willing  to  work  but  can  get  food 
and  shelter  in  requital ;  a  thing  this  two-footed  worker 
has  to  seek  for,  to  solicit  occasionally  in  vain.  He  is 
nobody 's  two-footed  worker ;  he  is  not  even  anybody 's 
slave.  And  yet  he  is  a  two-iooted  worker;  it  is  cur- 
rently reported  that  there  is  an  immortal  soul  in  him, 
sent  down  out  of  Heaven  into  the  Earth ;  and  one  be- 
holds him  seeking  for  this! — Nay,  what  will  a  wise 
Legislature  say,  if  it  turn  out  that  he  cannot  find  it ; 
that  the  answer  to  their  postulate  proposition  is  not 
affirmative  but  negative? 

Carlyle,  Essays,  VI,  122,  124,  125. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  EXTENT  AND  EVILS  OP  UNEMPLOYMENT 

OUR  army  has  mobilized.  But  it  is  a 
vei^  different  army  from  that  staining 
the  fields  of  Europe  with  blood.  It  has  no 
guns,  its  men  are  not  clothed  in  neat  khaki ; 
no  gorgeous  banners  wave  proudly  over  its 
ranks ;  no  bands  stir  the  souls  of  its  members 
to  deeds  of  heroism  for  hearth  and  country. 
Our  army,  as  a  recent  cartoon  depicted  it,  is 
an  army  of  unemployed  derelicts  that  stands 
all  the  day  idle,  shivering  in  the  cold  winds 
as  it  forms  a  long  line  around  some  soup- 
kitchen  or  bread-house.     It  is  a  defeated 

1 


2  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

army,  and  it  marches  with  the  shambling, 
uncertain  gait  that  comes  from  failure. 

We  do  not  know  accurately  how  many 
men  make  up  this  army.  There  is  no  ofl&cial 
roster  kept  of  enlistment  and  discharge.  No 
recruiting  office  with  a  high  standard  of 
physical  fitness  bars  one's  entrance  and  no 
court  martial  discharges  for  inefficiency  or 
bad  conduct.  It  is  the  easiest  army  in  the 
world  to  get  into,  and  the  hardest  to  get  out 
of.  Desertion  is  difficult,  often  impossible, 
yet  it  marks  the  only  path  to  honorable  dis- 
charge from  this  most  paradoxical  of  armies. 

It  has  been  our  habit  in  this  coimtry  to 
talk  long  and  loudly  about  freedom,  and  to 
contrast  our  easy  going  methods  with  the 
galling  espionage  of  the  police  systems  of 
Europe.  Fourth-of-July  orators  never  tire 
of  thanking  heaven  and  George  Washington 
that  every  American  is  free  to  work  out  his 
own  salvation,  vocal,  journalistic,  or  eco- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  8 

nomic,  without  interference  from  the  powers 
that  be.  But  just  what  does  this  freedom 
amount  to?  Are  all  the  people  free  every 
day  as  well  as  on  the  Fourth  of  July  ?  And 
does  that  freedom  really  work  out  salvation 
for  all,  or  does  it  work  the  salvation  of  the 
few  and  the  destruction  of  the  many  ? 

In  many  cases  our  boasted  freedom  is  a 
freedom  to  starve,  a  freedom  to  have  one's 
community  demoralized  by  shiftless  wander- 
ing laborers,  a  freedom  to  work  out  one's 
own  complete  demoralization  and  that  of 
others  without  let  or  hindrance  from  those 
whose  duty  it  is  to  procure  the  common  good. 
Unfortunately  for  those  who  have  work,  as 
well  as  for  those  who  have  it  not,  government 
does  not  interfere  even  to  tell  us  the  extent  of 
this  evil.  Yet  until  we  can  know  precisely 
how  many  are  out  of  work,  recommendations 
to  improve  conditions  must  be  somewhat 
vague  and  general.    Say,  for  instance,  that 


4  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

you  wish  to  co-ordinate  industries  in  such  a 
way  that  those  thrown  out  by  one  during  a 
slack  season  will  be  taken  on  by  another. 
Obviously,  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  know 
how  many  are  left  idle  in  this  way  before  you 
can  say  that  certain  other  lines  of  work 
where  busy  seasons  come  at  this  time  can 
take  them  on. 

The  first  thing  that  should  be  done,  there- 
fore, is  to  have  a  thorough  government  sur- 
vey of  unemployment.  Let  us  know  accu- 
rately the  extent  of  this  phenomenon,  let  us 
have  some  official  figures  upon  which  stu- 
dents can  rely.  Such  a  survey  should  tell 
us  not  merely  how  many  persons  are  out  of 
work  on  a  certain  day,  but  it  should  exhibit 
fluctuations  in  employment  in  each  industry 
throughout  the  year  so  that  something  could 
be  done  towards  co-ordination.  It  would  be 
well  to  know  that  two  million  men  lost  one 
hundred  days  each  in  a  year,  but  it  would  be 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  6 

better  to  know  how  many  days  were  lost  each 
month  so  as  to  see  how  far  co-ordination 
would  remedy  the  situation. 

Until  we  do  get  such  a  government  survey, 
however,  we  must  be  content  with  private 
estimates.  These  are  really  more  or  less 
shrewd  guesses.  During  the  winter  of  1914- 
1915,  the  American  Association  for  Labor 
Legislation  attempted  to  determine  the  ex- 
tent of  unemployment,  and  its  conclusion 
was  that  its  ^'questionnaires  have  served  to 
emphasize  the  most  important  present-day 
fact  about  unemployment;  namely,  that  we 
know  practically  nothing  about  it  and  have 
no  statistics  available."  (American  Labor 
Legislation  Review,  November,  1915,  p. 
475.) 

However,  John  B.  Andrews,  the  secretary 
of  this  Association,  thinks  that  the  most  con- 
servative estimate  would  designate  two  mil- 
lion wage-earners   as   unemployed  in  the 


6  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

United  States  during  the  winter  of  1915- 
1916.  (^* American  Cities  and  the  Preven- 
tion of  Unemplojrment, "  in  The  American 
City,  February,  1916,  p.  117.) 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  problem 
is  forced  upon  us  by  the  European  war  and 
that  it  will  disappear  once  peace  is  declared. 
This  great  cataclysm  doubtless  increased  un- 
employment in  this  country  by  demoralizing 
our  foreign  trade,  but  the  problem  has  been 
with  us  for  years.  The  war  has  but  forced 
our  attention  to  a  situation  that  should  long 
since  have  been  attended  to,  but  which  might 
have  continued  to  escape  our  notice  had  it 
not  become  so  acute.  Now,  perhaps,  we  have 
had  the  necessary  stimulus  to  arouse  us  to 
action  that  will  deal  effectively  with  normal 
unemployment. 

For  unemployment  is  normal.  Charles 
Booth  noted  long  ago  in  his  admirable  sur- 
vey of  the  poor  of  London  that  competitive 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  7 

industry  tends  to  produce  a  fringe  of  unem- 
ployed. Recently  the  Chicago  Municipal 
Markets  Commission  reiterated  this  judg- 
ment. ' '  Unemployment, ' '  it  declared,  *  *  is  an 
annual  recurring,  ever-present,  normal  con- 
dition of  the  maladjustment  of  industry  and 
business.  The  absence  of  unemployment 
should  rather  be  considered  unusual  and  ex- 
traordinary and  not  its  presence  in  our 
midst."  {Journal  of  Criminal  Law  and 
Criminology,  July,  1915,  p.  299.) 

Even  comparatively  steady  employments 
have  slack  seasons.  Thus  it  was  found  by 
students  of  the  Catholic  University  at  Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  that  there  was  a  difference  of 
fifty  per  cent,  in  the  summer  and  winter  pay- 
rolls of  the  Engineer  Department  of  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia.  And  the  Factory  Com- 
mission of  New  York  State  found  variations 
of  thirty  to  forty  per  cent,  in  the  working 
forces  of  some  industries  comparatively  free 


8  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

from  seasonal  variations  in  trade  volume. 
(American  Statistical  Association,  Sept., 
1915,  p.  612.) 

Further  light  is  thrown  upon  the  extent  of 
unemployment  by  the  experience  of  charity 
organizations.  Examining  figures  furnished 
by  the  organized  charities  of  New  York,  Bos- 
ton, and  Baltimore,  Amos  G.  Warner  found 
that  one-third  of  the  applicants  required 
work,  not  relief.  (American  Charities,  rev. 
ed..  New  York,  1908,  p.  53.) 

So  far  as  my  own  experience  goes,  two- 
thirds  would  seem  much  nearer  the  mark, 
and  I  believe  that  if  we  could  trace  the  life 
histories  of  the  other  third  we  would  find 
that  many  of  them  would  never  have  reached 
this  condition  of  dependence  had  there  been 
proper  facilities  for  furnishing  them  with 
work  when  they  first  started  upon  the  down- 
ward path. 

But  even  though  we  discount  these  esti- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  9 

mates  to  a  very  considerable  degree,  and 
even  though  we  confess  to  a  lack  of  suffi- 
ciently definite  information,  yet  we  know 
that  unemployment  in  all  its  phases  is  one 
of  the  most  important  problems  of  social  ad- 
justment. It  is  important  enough  in  itself, 
God  knows,  to  warrant  all  possible  atten- 
tion on  the  part  of  statesmen,  but  it  is  even 
more  important  on  account  of  its  cancerous 
ramifications  throughout  the  whole  social 
body. 

For  unemployment  does  not  affect  merely 
the  million  or  so  who  are  idle.  It  affects 
other  millions,  wives  and  children  and  de- 
pendents who  are  intimately  connected  with 
the  unemployed,  and  just  as  really,  though 
less  obviously,  it  affects  those  who  are  not 
unemployed.  Whatever  may  be  the  height 
and  depth  of  our  selfish  disregard  for  others, 
there  is  no  escaping  the  fact  that  when  the 
devil  takes  the  hindmost  the  jar  of  that  tak- 


10  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ing  is  felt  by  every  member  of  the  body 
politic. 

God  laid  upon  disobedient  man  the  obli- 
gation of  earning  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of 
his  brow.  But  his  brother  man,  less  merci- 
ful than  God,  has  made  heavier  that  burden 
by  refusing  him  a  living  wage  no  matter 
how  he  sweats,  and  sometimes  (as  is  happen- 
ing to  this  army  of  unemployed)  by  the 
stronger  refusing  to  the  weaker  the  very 
right  to  sweat! 

"Nowadays  it  is  turned  privilege 
To  have  only  God's  curse  on  us  and  not  man's." 

And  it  is  a  weighty  curse.  For  there  is  noth- 
ing harder  in  life,  perhaps,  than  for  a  self- 
respecting  man  to  tramp  the  streets  in  use- 
less searching  for  work  when  none  is  to  be 
found,  to  return  at  night  to  hungry  wife  and 
children  with  hands  empty  and  no  prospect 
of  their  being  filled. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  11 

You  who  have  scorned  the  laborer  for  his 
vices,  who  have  smelt  liquor  upon  a  beggar  or 
an  applicant  for  work  and  therefore  refused 
him,  think  for  a  moment  of  the  temptation 
pulling  at  his  heart — and  at  his  stomach. 
If  you  were  cold  and  hungry  and  wet,  if  all 
your  efforts  had  only  made  the  black  despair 
of  poverty  grip  you  the  harder,  and  the  sa- 
loon were  the  only  place  that  offered  warmth 
and  shelter  and  food  and  cheer  and  tempo- 
rary oblivion — would  you  be  strong  enough 
to  fight  it?    Possibly. 

But  there  are  hundreds  of  thousands  who 
are  not.  They  take  the  first  drink,  and  the 
second,  and  the  third.  The  habit  grows  upon 
them,  and  soon  they  are  no  longer  self-re- 
specting workmen  out  of  work,  but  profes- 
sional beggars  and  tramps.  Their  ambition 
is  no  longer  to  find  work.  It  is  to  get  the 
wherewithal  to  obtain  liquor.  They  can  no 
longer  help  themselves.    And  if  they  go  a 


12  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

little  farther  they  can  no  longer  be  helped. 
A  sodden,  brutish  content  takes  possession 
of  their  souls  and  they  are  ruined,  almost  be- 
yond redemption. 

Recently  there  appeared  in  one  of  our  big 
dailies  a  cartoon  poignantly  depicting  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  unemployment. 
Two  ragged  men  sit  on  a  bench  in  a  public 
square.  One  slouches  down  upon  the  seat, 
his  ears  drawn  into  his  collar,  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  a  perfect  portrayal  of  the  man 
who  has  given  up  the  fight.  The  other  has 
not  sunk  so  far.  He  is  leaning  forward, 
his  face  in  his  hands,  his  attitude  not  yet  one 
of  unresentful  impotence.  His  companion 
says :  '  ^  Cheer  up,  bo,  think  of  the  men  in  the 
trenches."  And  the  reply  eloquently  voices 
the  suffering  of  the  self-respecting  unem- 
ployed. *^Huh! — They've  got  a  chance  to 
be  shot!" 

There  is  some  hope  for  the  man  who  would 


,THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  13 

rather  die  than  endure  this  existence  unwor- 
thy of  a  man.  He  still  has  some  fight  in  him. 
If  a  life-line  can  be  thrown  him,  he  will  be 
saved,  but  the  man  who  has  ceased  to  desire 
to  work  is  hopeless.  All  internal  resistance 
has  been  broken  down.  No  vestige  of  self- 
respect  or  back-bone  is  left.  If  he  is  to  be 
saved,  it  must  be  from  outside  and  by  being 
built  up  anew. 

But  there  are  still  blacker  shadows  to  this 
picture.  If  it  were  merely  a  question  of  two 
million  men  more  or  less  responsible  for 
their  own  fate,  sinking  into  this  demoralized 
condition,  it  would  be  serious  enough.  They 
might  reasonably  expect  Christians  with  a 
command  laid  upon  them  to  love  their  neigh- 
bors as  themselves,  to  do  something  to  help 
them.  But  unfortunately  these  men  are  not 
simply  dropping  back  themselves.  They  are 
pulling  others  with  them.  Millions  of  de- 
pendent  women   and    children   are   being 


14  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

dragged  into  the  slough  of  despond  because 
the  heads  of  families  are  no  longer  able  to 
cope  with  the  problem  of  support.  Wives 
are  forced  out  into  casual  employment,  home 
duties  neglected,  children  run  wild  or  have 
their  lives  ground  out  in  soul-  and  body-de- 
stroying toil. 

We  have  heard  much  recently  of  the  hor- 
rible evils  of  child  and  woman  labor.  Thou- 
sands of  children  are  stunted  in  mind  and 
body,  because  they  must  take  their  place  in 
industry  before  their  time.  Children  have 
actually  been  killed  by  excessive  work  in  fac- 
tories, and  others  who  do  not  go  to  work  have 
hardly  a  better  fate.  In  every  school  in  the 
poorer  districts  of  our  big  cities,  you  can 
see  the  pinched  and  sallow  faces,  the  spindle 
legs,  bespeaking  slow  starvation.  Women, 
too,  at  the  most  critical  periods,  when  other 
lives  are  depending  so  directly  upon  theirs, 
are  compelled  to  such  heavy  labor  as  saps 


iTHE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  16 

not  only  their  own  vitality  but  the  strength 
of  the  coming  generation.  How  can  they 
possibly  nourish  two  on  what  is  not  sufficient 
for  one?  How  can  the  children  born  into 
such  conditions  be  anything  but  weak  and 
sickly  and  fretful  ? 

Directly  or  indirectly  unemployment  is  re- 
sponsible for  all  these  ills.  For  even  when 
the  head  of  the  family  has  work,  it  is  the  fear 
of  unemployment  that  makes  him  accept  less 
than  a  living  wage,  and  then  drives  his  wife 
and  children  to  eke  out  his  pittance  with 
their  own.  This  is  the  sword  of  Damocles 
that  is  constantly  over  the  helpless  work- 
man's head.  He  does  not  know  at  what  mo- 
ment it  may  fall  to  maim  forever  not  only 
himself  but  also  his  loved  ones. 

But  this  does  not  exhaust  the  evils  of  un- 
employment. Like  some  great  octopus  it  is 
reaching  out  its  fearful  tentacles  to  draw 
millions  upon  millions  into  its  greedy  maw. 


16  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

It  is  not  content  with  its  immediate  victims 
and  their  dependents,  but  it  poisons  the  life 
of  the  whole  community. 

Obviously,  the  Good  Samaritan  is  affected. 
For  whence  come  the  food  and  clothing  and 
shelter  that  the  idle  need  ?  These  men  must 
be  supported  in  some  way.  If  there  were 
two  million  men  idle  last  winter,  then  for 
every  day  of  idleness  at  least  two  million 
dollars  in  wages  were  lost.  And  while,  nat- 
urally, this  huge  army  does  not  spend  as 
much  in  times  of  idleness  as  it  did  when  em- 
ployed, nevertheless,  it  must  need  tremen- 
dous sums  for  its  support.  Some  of  this 
money  comes  from  past  savings,  but  much 
must  also  come  from  those  who  are  still  em- 
ployed. The  longer  idleness  continues,  the 
more  of  a  burden  does  this  army  of  unem- 
ployed become. 

Yet  another  loss  to  the  community  is  de- 
rived from  the  fact  that  if  these  men  had 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  17 

continued  working  they  would  have  added  to 
the  wealth  of  the  nation  about  two  and  one- 
half  times  their  wages.  That  is  to  say,  if 
their  wages  would  have  been  a  billion  dol- 
lars, the  total  product  of  their  labor  would 
have  been  worth,  before  deducting  their  pay, 
three  and  one-half  billions.  Such  a  loss  of 
national  wealth  would  be  serious  under  any 
conditions,  but  it  is  doubly  serious  when  we 
are  paying  a  fuel  bill,  as  it  were,  to  burn  it 
up.  If  a  fire  or  earthquake  or  flood  were  to 
destroy  this  much  wealth  every  paper  in  the 
country  would  deplore  it.  Why,  then,  do  we 
calmly  ignore  this  much  worse  condition, 
which  yearly  engulfs  not  alone  material 
wealth  but  the  very  life's  blood  of  the  nation 
in  ruined  manhood  and  womanhood  and 
childhood ! 

Again,  the  business  men  who  have  to  bear 
the  burden  of  charity  to  support  these  unem- 
ployed must  do  so  from  decreased  resources, 


18  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

because  of  the  lessened  purchasing  power  of 
the  public.  No  man  can  prosper  in  business 
unless  his  neighbor  prospers  too.  The  mer- 
chant is  engaged  in  selling,  and  the  greater 
his  neighbor's  power  to  pay,  the  more  he  can 
sell.  The  corner  groceryman  realizes  this 
well.  He  knows  that  if  his  patrons  are  out 
of  work,  his  bills  will  be  unpaid ;  and  others 
are  affected  similarly,  though  not  so  visibly. 
Inability  to  sell  reacts,  too,  upon  the  wages 
of  employees  as  well  as  upon  the  profits  of 
employers,  so  that  the  effects  of  unemploy- 
ment reach  all  classes — the  workmen  em- 
ployed, the  merchant,  the  Good  Samaritan, 
the  priest  and  the  Levite. 

Still  further,  the  fact  that  two  million  per- 
sons are  consuming  without  producing 
means  that  the  cost  of  living  will  rise.  For 
prices  will  be  higher  than  they  would  be  were 
the  supply  increased  by  the  possible  product 
of  all  these  idle  workers. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  19 

There  is,  then,  no  way  in  which  any  one 
can  pass  by  on  the  other  side  of  these  unfor- 
tunates. Whether  or  not  their  hearts  are 
touched  with  Christian  charity,  the  blight  of 
their  brother's  misfortune  will  shadow  their 
fortune.  Only  the  very  few,  such  as  loan 
sharks,  who  make  a  business  of  preying  upon 
the  poor,  can  profit  by  large  masses  being  out 
of  work.  All  legitimate  business  suffers  di- 
rectly or  indirectly. 

It  has  frequently  been  said  that  each 
workman  in  Europe  is  carrying  a  soldier  on 
his  back.  But  it  is  a  vigorous  soldier  who 
can  be  of  some  use  to  his  country.  With  us 
the  workers  are  carrying  an  army  on  their 
backs,  but  it  is  a  helpless,  a  useless,  a  vicious 
consuming  and  non-producing  army  that  can 
do  the  country  no  good  under  any  conditions. 
It  is  almost  as  if  each  laborer  were  carrying 
a  foreign,  invading  soldier  on  his  back. 

We  have  often  heard  it  said  during  the 


20  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

present  war  that  Europe  has  reverted  to 
barbarism.  Our  people  are  aghast  at  the 
destruction  of  life  and  property  going  on 
abroad.  They  thank  God  that  they  are  not 
as  other  men,  that  they  have  more  Christian 
charity,  more  love  of  their  brothers  than  to 
indulge  in  such  senseless  slaughter.  Yet  it 
might  be  better  for  us  to  stand  afar  off  in  the 
temple  and  strike  our  breasts  while  asking 
God  to  be  merciful  to  us  sinners.  For  the 
comparison  is  not  entirely  to  our  credit. 

The  soldier  dies  with  an  ideal  in  his  heart, 
with  love  for  his  country  and  his  hearth, 
with  his  manhood  intact.  Our  poor  ragged 
soldier  does  not,  perhaps,  lose  his  life — ^he 
loses  only  his  self-respect,  his  manhood,  his 
faith  in  his  fellow  man,  his  faith  in  God !  In 
this  army  of  ours  there  is  none  of  the  morale 
that  comes  from  discipline,  none  of  the  spir- 
itual exaltation  that  is  induced  by  consecra- 
tion to  a  cause,  none  of  the  confidence  and 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  21 

efficiency  inspired  by  trusted  leaders.  Our 
soldier  has  strength  but  is  forbidden  to  use 
it,  has  protectiveness  that  is  turned  to  bitter 
raging  impotence,  he  has  skill  which  is  lost 
in  the  gradual  relaxing  of  physical  and 
moral  fibre.  His  vision  becomes  shifty,  his 
muscles  relaxed,  his  will  feeble,  and  if  he 
does  not  escape  in  time  it  will  take  a  miracle 
to  save  him.  Almost  literally  he  will  have 
to  be  born  again  if  he  is  to  be  redeemed. 


CHAPTER   II 

EVEKY  MAN  HAS  A  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

WE  have  seen  something  of  the  extent 
and  evils  of  unemployment.  Those 
directly  injured — the  actual  workers  and 
their  dependents — amount  up  into  the  mil- 
lions, while  the  whole  country  is  indirectly 
affected.  And  this  condition  is  at  the  bottom 
of  much  drink  and  sickness  and  almost  all 
poverty.  When  we  take  a  broad  survey  in 
this  way  of  all  its  ramifications,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
this  problem. 

Unquestionably  the  fact  of  so  many  men 
being  out  of  work  demands  action,  and 
prompt  action.    But  at  the  same  time  it  de- 

22 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  23 

mands  that  the  action  shall  be  wise  and  pru- 
dent. To  go  off  half  cocked,  as  it  were,  to 
be  led  by  a  kindly  heart  rather  than  a  mature 
judgment  may  merely  add  to  our  difficulties, 
and  our  last  state  may  be  worse  than  our 
first.  For  though  conditions  are  bad  enough, 
they  are  better  than  they  might  be. 

It  may  be  well,  therefore,  at  the  very  start 
to  point  out  certain  things  that  should  not  be 
done.  For,  while  it  is  good  to  be  sorry  for 
having  made  a  mistake,  it  is  better  to  exer- 
cise such  foresight  as  will  prevent  mistakes 
being  made. 

To  begin  with,  then,  the  remedy  for  unem- 
ployment is  not  the  free  distribution  of  food 
and  clothing.  Soup-kitchens,  bread-lines,  in- 
discriminate charity  are  palliatives  that  may 
make  the  disease  worse  than  it  is  at  present. 
It  may  be  necessary  sometimes  to  give  im- 
mediate assistance.  A  man  who  has  been  out 
of  work  so  long  that  he  is  half  starved  or 


M  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

who  is  too  weak  to  work  may  need  food 
above  everything  else. 

But  such  measures  should  be  recognized 
frankly  as  merely  temporary.  They  do  not 
affect  the  real  problem  in  the  least.  The  im- 
mediate need  of  the  applicant  is  relieved,  but 
he  will  be  back  again  to-morrow.  And  per- 
haps to-morrow  he  will  not  be  alone.  In- 
discriminate charity  in  the  sphere  of  philan- 
thropy is  like  fertilizer  on  a  wheat  field — it 
produces  a  more  abundant  crop.  Where  one 
beggar  grew  before,  there  will  be  two  under 
such  a  system,  or  lack  of  system.  What  we 
need  is  something  to  stop  the  supply.  It 
may  be  necessary  to  pour  oil  and  wine  into  a 
man's  wounds,  but  we  should  also  do  some- 
thing to  prevent  men  getting  into  a  condi- 
tion where  they  need  such  charity. 

Many  people  strive  to  salve  their  con- 
sciences by  spreading  a  king's  feast  for  the 
poor  at  Christmas  or  Thanksgiving,  and  re- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  25 

fuse  to  consider  their  necessities  the  other 
three  hundred  and  sixty-four  days  of  the 
year.  They  send  to  the  Salvation  Army  or 
other  charitable  organizations  their  dis- 
carded clothing  in  all  stages  of  careless  dis- 
repair. But  even  if  it  were  possible  for 
good-hearted  people  to  assume  the  entire 
support  of  the  unemployed  in  a  decent  and 
respectable  manner,  it  would  be  far  from  de- 
sirable. The  person  who  for  the  first  time 
has  accepted  charity  has  abated  something 
of  his  self-respect.  A  second  application  is 
easier,  and  then  the  down  grade  leading  to 
dependence  is  short  and  easily  travelled. 

Men  soon  lose  the  desire  to  work  hard  for 
a  living  when  charitably  minded  folk  are 
willing  to  relieve  them  of  the  necessity.  Our 
pity  should  never  make  us  forget  that  the 
command  to  earn  one 's  bread  in  the  sweat  of 
one 's  brow  is  beneficent  and  necessary.  It  is 
false  kindness  to  dispense  with  that  law, 


26  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

and  the  consequences  are  even  more  disas- 
trous with  poor  people  than  with  rich.  Both 
classes — the  upper  and  the  lower  tenth — 
prove  that  there  is  something  sacramental 
about  work,  that  idleness  leads  to  physical 
and  moral  disintegration,  and  that  every  one 
needs  the  uplifting  influence  of  useful  ac- 
tivity. 

"Get  leave  to  work 
In  this  world — 'tis  the  best  you  get  at  all; 
For   God,   in   cursing,   gives  us  better   gifts 
Than  men  in  benediction.     God  says  'Sweat 
For  foreheads:'  men  say,  'Crowns.'    And  so  we 

are  crowned, 
Ay,  gashed  by  some  tormenting  circle  of  steel 
Which  snaps  with  a  sudden  spring.     Get  work, 

get  work ! 
Be  sure  'tis  better  than  what  you  work  to  get." 
{Mrs.  Browning,  "Aurora  Leigh,"  Book  II.) 

Our  first  conviction,  therefore,  in  ap- 
proaching this  question  should  concern  the 
essential  blessedness  of  work  and  its  healing 
power  for  social  evils.    Hence  any  one  who 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  27 

is  able  to  work,  whether  rich  or  poor,  should 
work.  For  there  is  imposed  on  every  one  the 
duty  to  labor  (Cathrein,  MoralpMlosophie, 
II,  59).  ''As  a  bird  to  fly,  so  is  man  made  to 
work.  Wisely,  too,  has  the  Creator  placed 
in  man 's  nature  many  needs  that  are  not  im- 
mediately satisfied,  so  that  he  may  not  lack 
the  motive  for  a  many-sided  activity  and  de- 
velopment of  his  powers.  For  most  men 
labor  is  necessary  in  order  that  they  may 
honorably  provide  for  and  support  them- 
selves and  those  dependent  upon  them. 
Labor  is  also  necessary  that  men  may  avoid 
certain  moral  dangers  and  temptations ;  ac- 
cording to  the  old  adage,  idleness  is  the  be- 
ginning of  every  vice.  Finally,  labor  is  use- 
ful, not  merely  for  the  preservation  of 
health,  but  also  for  the  acquirement  of  moral 
virtues  and  merit  for  eternity."     {Id.) 

Those  who  are  able  to  work,  but  won't, 
should  be  made  to  work ;  those  who  are  anx- 


28  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ious  to  work,  but  who  cannot  find  access  to 
the  land  or  tools,  should  be  provided  with 
the  opportunity.  Society  is  wrongly  organ- 
ized unless  work  is  guaranteed.  It  is  a  cruel 
mockery  to  tell  a  man,  ^'If  you  work,  you 
must  get  a  sufficient  wage  to  support  your- 
self and  family  in  frugal  comfort" — and 
then  let  him  starve  for  want  of  work.  We 
need  more  than  a  minimum  wage  law;  we 
need  also  to  provide  the  opportunity  of 
working  for  such  a  wage.  A  man,  by  the 
very  fact  that  he  is  a  man,  has  a  right  to  a 
living  wage,  but  he  also  has  a  right  to 
work. 

This,  then,  is  our  second  conviction  in  ap- 
proaching this  problem  of  unemployment — 
that  each  man  has  a  right  to  work. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  an  exaggerated 
individualism  that  this  proposition  seems 
startling  at  first  sight.  The  discredited  the- 
ories of  a  laissez  faire  age  may  yet  obscure 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  29 

our  vision  somewhat.  However,  it  is  neither 
right  nor  natural  that  men  should  be  allowed 
to  starve  because  they  cannot  find  work,  nor 
that  they  should  be  fed  on  doles  of  charity 
without  working.  It  is  an  accident  of  the 
capitalistic  regime.  But  it  has  not  accom- 
panied other  regimes,  nor  is  it  an  essential 
phenomenon  of  our  present  industrial 
system. 

If  we  go  back  through  past  periods  of 
economic  history,  we  can  see  that  this  great 
problem  of  unemplojmaent  was  practically 
unknown.  When  the  earth  was  being  peo- 
pled and  her  children  looked  out  upon  virgin 
resources,  all  a  man  had  to  do  was  to  use  the 
opportunities  common  to  all.  He  could  hunt 
or  fish  or  hew  wood  to  his  heart's  content  or 
as  his  skill  allowed.  There  was  no  one  whose 
permission  he  needed  to  ask  if  he  wished 
trout  for  dinner  or  fire  to  warm  his  hut.  The 
skins  of  beasts  he  killed  furnished  him  with 


30  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

clothing  as  comfortable  and  satisfactory  as 
that  made  by  a  Fifth  Avenue  tailor. 

Evidently,  there  was  no  question  of  unem- 
ployment here.  Of  work  there  was  always  a 
superabundance.  If  a  man  starved,  it  was 
not  for  lack  of  work.  Employment  was  the 
natural  and  customary  thing,  unemployment 
was  unnatural  and  unusual. 

Again,  under  a  regime  of  serfdom  or 
slavery,  there  was  ordinarily  no  problem  of 
employment.  We  have  had  slave  uprisings 
because  too  much  work  was  placed  upon 
them,  because  they  were  required  to  make 
bricks  without  straw,  but  whoever  heard  of 
slaves  rebelling  because  there  was  no  work, 
because  there  were  no  bricks  to  be  made  ? 

A  slave's  w^ork  was  never  done.  The 
amount  of  labor  applicable  to  a  plantation 
was  practically  unlimited.  It  was  the  eas- 
iest thing  in  the  world  to  find  work,  and  if 
one  didn't  find  it  for  himself,  some  one  else 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  31 

found  it  for  him.  An  overseer  with  a  black- 
snake  whip,  even  if  he  never  used  it,  was  al- 
ways a  possibility  to  stimulate  exertion. 

We  should  be  extremely  careful  not  to  al- 
low the  familiarity  of  certain  phenomena 
attaching  to  the  regime  under  which  we  live 
to  make  us  think  them  necessary  and  inevi- 
table. Indeed,  the  fact  that  such  unjust  and 
inhuman  conditions  as  we  have  described  in 
the  first  chapter  exist  now  without  being 
questioned  indicates  (paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem)  that  they  did  not  always  exist.  For 
if  they  had  existed  when  the  great  Christian 
moralists  were  writing,  assuredly  they  would 
have  come  in  for  their  share  of  comment  and 
condemnation. 

But  as  these  men  wrote  under  a  regime 
that  was  partly  one  of  serfdom  and  partly 
one  of  small  self -employers,  they  did  not 
give  to  this  question  of  the  right  to  work  the 
consideration  that  is  forced  upon  our  at- 


32  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

tention,  because  for  them  the  problem  did 
not  exist.  Thus  St.  Thomas  in  his  epoch- 
making  Secunda  Secundae  makes  no  men- 
tion of  the  question.  In  the  society  upon 
which  he  looked  out  the  opportunity  to  work 
was  almost  always  present,  and  there  was 
no  use  wasting  time  talking  about  such  an 
improbable  hypothesis  as  that  a  man  should 
not  have  the  chance  to  work. 

To-day,  however,  the  moralist  faces  an  en- 
tirely different  situation.  A  few  individuals 
have  appropriated  the  natural  resources, 
and  as  a  man  needs  natural  resources  before 
he  can  work,  he  is  barred  from  working  un- 
less the  owners  allow  it.  If  he  needs  a  din- 
ner and  is  willing  to  work  for  it  by  killing  a 
rabbit,  as  he  might  have  done  at  one  time  in 
the  world's  history,  there  may  be  a  game- 
keeper to  arrest  him  for  poaching.  Or  if  he 
wishes  to  make  something  (as  he  might  have 
done  under  a  regime  of  hand  work),  he  dis- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  33 

covers  that  the  raw  materials  have  all  been 
appropriated  or  that  he  cannot  work  with- 
out the  use  of  tools  belonging  to  some  one 
else. 

At  present  the  majority  of  men  can  work 
only  by  permission  of  other  men.  In  some 
ways  the  modern  laborer  is  worse  off  than 
slave  or  serf,  for  they  were  assured  at  least 
of  food  and  clothing  and  shelter.  Over  him, 
on  the  contrary,  there  hangs  a  nerve-racking 
uncertainty.  His  living  depends  upon  his 
selling  the  only  commodity  he  has,  his  labor, 
and  in  that  position  he  is  worse  off  than  the 
seller  of  any  other  article.  For  a  man  who 
offers  oranges,  for  instance,  can  hold  them 
until  to-morrow  if  the  price  is  not  satisfac- 
tory, whereas  the  laborer  cannot  sell  to-day's 
labor  to-morrow.  It  will  have  disappeared 
completely,  and  to-morrow's  supply  will  be 
inferior  if  to-day  he  did  not  get  sufficient 
food  to  meet  his  physical  needs. 


S4  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

What,  then,  is  the  answer  that  moralists 
give  when  confronted  with  this  situation? 
Has  a  man  a  right  to  demand  a  market  for 
his  labor!    Has  he  a  riglit  to  work? 

It  will  be  only  among  the  very  modern 
writers  that  we  shall  find  any  discussion  of 
this  subject.  St.  Thomas  and  his  contem- 
poraries, as  we  have  seen,  did  not  advert  to 
it  because  it  was  merely  hypothetical  in  their 
time.  For  St.  Alphonsus,  even,  it  was  hardly 
a  practical  question,  and  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised to  find  him  discussing  ''Labor"  only 
in  relation  to  Sunday  observance  and  fast- 
ing. Leo  XIII,  it  is  true,  was  ex  professo 
and  at  length  treating  of  the  condition  of 
workingmen,  but  he  was  living  in  a  country 
where  the  effects  of  the  industrial  revolution 
had  not  proceeded  as  far  as  in  England  and 
the  United  States  and  where  the  less  acute 
phenomena  of  unemployment  were  further 
tempered  by  extensive  emigration.    His  fail- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  35 

ure  to  mention  this  phase  of  the  situation 
was  not,  therefore,  extraordinary.  But  it 
seems  rather  curious  that  Lehmkuhl  with 
his  interest  in  modern  social  problems 
should  have  insisted  strongly  in  his  The- 
ologia  Moralis  upon  the  duty  to  work  while 
completely  passing  over  the  right  to  work. 
(The  edition  of  1902  is  the  one  before  me. 
Perhaps  in  later  editions  or  elsewhere  he  has 
treated  this  point.) 

Noldin  has  this  short,  though  very  clear, 
reference :  * '  Every  man  has  a  right  to  work, 
that  is,  he  has  a  right  by  just  means  to 
seek  labor  which  is  lawful  for  him  and  to 
perform  that  labor,  and  hence  he  has  a 
right  to  demand  that  others  shall  not  hinder 
him  in  the  exercise  of  this  right.  This  right 
is  founded  in  another  right,  that  of  pre- 
serving and  perfecting  life,  to  which  in- 
dustrial labor  is  ordinarily  necessary." 
{Theologia  Moralis,  II,  No.  69.) 


36  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

This  principle  is  perfectly  plain.  And 
thougli  Noldin  goes  on  to  qualify  his  state- 
ment, the  qualification  really  means  nothing 
more  than  that  the  laborer  has  not  a  strict 
right  in  commutative  justice.  Noldin 's 
words  are:  **No  one  has  a  right  to  work, 
that  is,  to  demand  that  some  one  else 
(whether  a  private  individual  or  the  State) 
should  offer  or  procure  him  work,  even 
though  he  be  in  need  of  the  necessaries  of 
life." 

The  reason  that  Noldin  gives  for  this  qual- 
ification— that ' '  in  every  case  the  obligation 
of  supplying  lucrative  employment  is  op- 
posed to  the  right  of  property" — shows 
clearly  that  he  means  it  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  have  explained  it.  For  in  the  same  way 
the  right  of  property  is  opposed  to  the  obli- 
gation of  actually  giving  one's  possessions 
to  another.  Yet  all  theologians  agree  that  a 
person  in  extremest  need  has  a  right  to  take 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  37 

what  he  needs,  and  that  the  possessor  has 
a  duty  in  charity  to  give. 

To  prevent  the  disorders  that  would  result 
from  asserting  these  rights,  however,  there 
is  a  duty  of  legal  justice  incumbent  upon  the 
State  to  furnish  work  to  such  as  cannot  oth- 
erwise find  it.  When  a  government  allows 
such  a  private  appropriation  of  property  as 
to  close  all  opportunity  of  emplojrment  to 
any  large  class,  it  becomes  responsible  for 
affording  to  each  man  some  reasonable  re- 
turn for  the  opportunities  that  would  other- 
wise be  his.  Private  property  should  never 
be  absolute.  The  State  will  not  allow  a  pri- 
vate individual  who  owns  both  sides  of  a 
navigable  river  to  close  it  to  traffic  or  to 
fishing,  and  as  it  sometimes  compels  indi- 
vidual owners  of  large  tracts  of  land  to  open 
roads  for  the  convenience  of  the  public,  so  it 
should  keep  open  certain  avenues  to  work 
that  would  otherwise  be  closed  by  the  selfish- 


38  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ness  of  individuals.  This  is  a  simple  de- 
mand of  justice. 

Each  one,  then,  has  a  right  in  legal  justice 
to  the  opportunity  to  work.  Noldin,  indeed, 
specifically  admits  this  when  the  number  of 
unemployed  is  so  great  as  to  endanger  the 
good  of  the  community.  {Loc.  cit.)  For  all 
practical  purposes  this  is  to  acknowledge 
the  right  to  work,  since  we  have  seen  that 
there  can  be  no  question  but  what  this  con- 
dition is  fulfilled.  The  man  out  of  work  is 
interested  in  getting  a  job,  and  it  is  all  one  to 
him  whether  the  State  is  obliged  in  legal  or 
in  commutative  justice  to  supply  it. 

Cathrein,  perhaps,  brings  this  out  more 
clearly  than  Noldin.  After  speaking  of  the 
laborer's  insecurity  of  existence  under  the 
present  industrial  order,  he  adds:  "In  or- 
der to  give  the  workman  a  sure  basis  for  his 
existence,  there  is  ascribed  to  him  a  right  to 
work.     However,  this  is  not  a  universal, 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  39 

strict  right.  No  irrefutable  reason  for  such 
a  [strict]  right  can  be  given.  .  .  .  But  at 
times  society  (the  municipality  or  the 
State)  has  the  duty,  according  to  its  abil- 
ity, to  furnish  laborers  with  remunerative 
employment.  For  in  the  extremest  need 
each  one  has  a  right  to  take  for  himself, 
wherever  he  finds  it,  what  is  necessary  for 
life.  This  right  belongs  also  to  the  laborer. 
And  who  will  forbid  him  to  unite  with  others, 
who  are  in  the  same  condition,  in  the  attain- 
ment of  this  object?  From  such  a  condition 
of  affairs  there  may  easily  arise  the  most 
serious  evils  for  the  community.  Hence  the 
authorities  are  bound  to  prevent  this  in  some 
way.  The  proper  way  is  not  the  distribution 
of  alms,  but  the  furnishing  of  lucrative 
work.  This  is  often  to  be  had,  though  the 
laborers  do  not  know  of  it.  Public  employ- 
ment bureaus  are  therefore  to  be  com- 
mended. .  .  .  But  if  work  is  to  be  found  in 


40  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

no  other  way,  then  the  municipalities  or  the 
State  should  undertake  public  improve- 
ments (street  paving,  canals,  and  the  like)." 
(MoralphilosopJtie,  II,  p.  632.) 

While  there  is  no  doubt  that  unemploy- 
ment is  so  widespread  as  to  cause  serious 
danger  to  the  community,  yet  as  a  matter  of 
precision  it  is  well  to  insist  that  the  right  to 
support  himself  is  inherent  in  each  man, 
and  that  even  if  there  were  only  one  citizen 
who  could  not  find  this  opportunity^  the 
State  would  be  obliged  in  legal  justice  to 
furnish  him  the  chance. 

This  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  conclusion 
from  the  words  of  Leo  XIII,  and  that 
learned  Pontiff  would  probably  have  drawn 
it  himself  had  his  attention  been  called  to  it. 
^'The  preservation  of  life,"  he  writes  in  his 
Encyclical  on  The  Condition  of  Labor, 
"is  the  bounden  duty  of  each  and  all,  and  to 
fail  therein  is  a  crime.    It  follows  that  each 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  41 

one  has  a  right  to  procure  what  is  required 
in  order  to  live ;  and  the  poor  can  procure  it 
in  no  other  way  than  by  work  and  wages." 
The  great  social  reform  Pope  concluded  with 
inexorable  logic  that  this  right  to  live  im- 
plied a  right  to  a  living  wage :  does  it  not  at 
the  same  time  imply  a  right  to  work  for  this 
wage  ?  If  a  man  can  live  only  by  work,  and 
he  has  a  right  to  live,  there  seems  no  escape 
from  the  conclusion  that  he  has  a  right  to 
work.  For  the  right  to  a  living  wage  with- 
out the  right  to  work  is  as  profitable  to  an 
unemployed  laborer  as  is  the  water  of  a 
mirage  to  a  thirsty  traveller. 

We  have  seen  how  far  Noldin  and  Lehm- 
kuhl  and  Cathrein  accept  this  doctrine. 
They  are  not  alone,  however.  Fr.  Kelleher, 
in  his  excellent  book  on  Private  Owner- 
ship, sees  the  implications  of  such  a  system 
and  asserts  that  each  one  has  a  right  to  a  job 
or  to  its  equivalent.   And  Cardinal  Manning, 


42  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

though  not  a  theologian  nor  a  scientific  social 
worker,  had  considerable  insight  into  social 
conditions,  and  declared  emphatically: 
^' Every  man  has  a  right  to  work  or  to 
bread."  (Purcell's  Life  of  Cardinal  Man- 
ning, II,  p.  656. 

So  far  as  I  know,  prominent  non-Catholic 
ethicists  (if  we  exclude  Socialists)  have  not 
touched  upon  this  specific  point  of  the  right 
to  work. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  state's  duty  TO  THE  TEMPORARH^Y  UN- 
EMPLOYED 

WHEN  unemployment  is  as  extended  as 
it  is  in  the  United  States,  moralists 
are  agreed  that  the  State  has  a  duty  in  legal 
justice  to  provide  in  some  way  for  those  out 
of  work.  But  before  determining  what  is  to 
be  done,  we  must  realize  that  all  are  not  un- 
employed for  the  same  reason;  and  hence 
that  the  same  treatment  will  not  apply  to  all 
alike.  A  remedy  that  is  to  be  meted  out  to 
all  in  the  same  way  is  by  that  very  fact  con- 
demned. A  careful  diagnosis  must  be  made 
before  any  prudent  steps  can  be  taken  to 
mend  matters. 

In  examining  the  situation,  the  first  out- 

43 


44  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

standing  fact  that  strikes  the  observer  is 
that  some  of  the  unemployed  are  unemploy- 
able— at  least  by  private  employers.  This 
may  be  because  of  some  defect.  (Cf.  "The 
Men  We  Lodge:  a  Eeport  of  the  Advisory 
Social  Service  Committee  of  the  Municipal 
Lodging  House  of  New  York  City,"  Ameri- 
can Labor  Legislation  Review,  Nov.,  1915,  p. 
607.)  Even  those  who  are  able-bodied,  but 
who  will  not  work,  belong  in  this  class,  as 
they  need  more  discipline  than  the  private 
employer  can  afford  to  give. 

Or  it  may  be  that  a  man  is  unemploj^able 
in  any  private  undertaking  because  there 
may  be  no  place  for  him.  When  industry  is 
organized  for  sale,  no  employer  wants  more 
hands  than  he  needs  to  make  the  goods  he 
can  sell.  If  he  takes  on  more,  it  is  at  a  loss, 
and  he  will  be  forced  to  give  way  to  less  kind- 
hearted  employers. 

These  two  divisions  of  the  unemployables 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  45 

— the  capable  and  the  incapable — require  the 
making  of  work  for  them  by  the  State, 
though  in  different  ways.  The  measure  is  so 
distinct  from  the  remedy  that  is  necessary 
for  what  may  be  called  the  temporarily  un- 
employed that  its  consideration  can  best  be 
deferred  to  another  chapter. 

The  other  class — those  who  can  profitably 
be  used  in  competitive  industry — may  be 
conveniently  subdivided  into  three  groups. 

First  of  all,  we  have  those  belonging  to 
trades  where  work  is  steady,  but  a  few  days 
are  lost  between  each  job.  If  the  wages  are 
good,  the  loss  of  time  can  be  looked  upon  as 
an  enforced  vacation.  What  they  need  most 
is  information  as  to  another  job,  and  hence 
employment  bureaus  are  the  proper  solution. 

Again,  there  are  persons  out  of  work  be- 
cause they  are  engaged  in  some  seasonal  oc- 
cupation, such  as  logging,  chopping  cotton, 
and  the  like.    More  than  anything  else  they 


46  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

need  a  co-ordination  of  industries  so  tliat 
they  can  move  from  one  to  another  without 
much  loss  of  time. 

And  finally  we  have  those  who  are  only  oc- 
casionally out  of  work,  as  book-keepers, 
typists,  and  printers.  In  addition  to  employ- 
ment agencies,  they  need  assistance  till  they 
can  find  work,  and  the  best  way  to  give  it  to 
them  is  by  compulsory  insurance. 

We  must  not  think  because  we  make  this 
division  of  the  unemployed  that  the  rem- 
edies do  not  overlap.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
insurance  and  emploj^nent  agencies  will 
help  all  three  classes,  and  the  man  engaged 
in  some  seasonal  occupation  will  be  helped 
by  all  three  remedies. 

I.     EMPLOYMENT  BUREAUS 

The  object  of  an  employment  bureau  is  to 
notify  the  jobless  man  of  an  opportunity  to 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  47 

work.  Charitable  agencies  have  long  been 
doing  this  task  in  a  haphazard,  systemless 
sort  of  way,  but  the  emplojonent  bureau  was 
first  efficiently  developed,  as  a  profitable  en- 
terprise, in  certain  limited  spheres,  such  as 
domestic  service  and  teaching.  Even  to-day 
some  of  these  private  undertakings  are  sat- 
isfactorily serving  both  employers  and  em- 
ployed. This  is  especially  true  where  labor 
requiring  a  certain  technical  preparation  is 
handled. 

As  a  whole,  however,  private  employment 
agencies  have  fallen  into  disrepute  on  ac- 
count of  certain  alleged  abuses  in  connection 
with  them.  They  are  said,  for  instance, 
sometimes  to  have  had  agreements  with  an 
employer  to  discharge  men  already  em- 
ployed in  order  that  they  might  get  another 
fee  from  some  other  applicant.  In  large 
centers  like  New  York  and  Chicago,  and  in 
jobs  requiring  no  skill,  such  an  operation 


48  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

seems  entirely  possible.  At  any  rate,  some 
States  have  forbidden  private  agencies  to 
operate,  except  in  so  far  as  they  deal  with  a 
trained  clientele  to  some  extent  able  to  de- 
fend itself. 

These  possible  abuses,  and  the  nature  of 
the  work  requiring  a  large  office  force,  elab- 
orate record  keeping,  and  wide  experience 
regarding  labor  conditions,  have  led  to  the 
establishment  of  public  bureaus  by  munici- 
palities. States  and  the  Federal  Government. 

To  do  the  work  effectively  bureaus  con- 
ducted by  each  one  of  these  governmental 
agencies  are  necessary,  or  at  least  by  the 
municipalities  and  the  Federal  authorities. 
A  certain  minute  knowledge  of  conditions  is 
necessary  to  advise  applicants  quickly  and 
successfully,  and  at  the  same  time  a  broad 
survey  of  the  field  in  order  to  direct  the 
larger  migrations  of  labor.  The  chief  object 
of  the  local  bureaus  will  be  to  assist  those 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  49 

who  are  tied  to  that  particular  place  in  some 
way,  whereas  the  national  agency  by  adding 
to  the  mobility  of  labor  will  help  to  stabilize 
employment. 

In  the  beginning  of  such  a  movement  a 
large  amount  of  advertising  will  be  neces- 
sary to  bring  the  bureaus  before  the  employ- 
ers and  the  unemployed.  Both  classes  must 
be  educated  to  use  these  channels  to  supply 
their  respective  wants.  Until  that  is  done, 
special  field  agents  will  probably  be  neces- 
sary to  get  in  touch  with  employers.  For 
the  side  on  which  most  bureaus  fail  to-day  is 
in  finding  jobs,  not  workers.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  various  governmental  agencies 
that  have  established  bureaus  so  far  have 
been  so  parsimonious  in  their  appropriations 
that  their  efficiency  has  been  seriously  handi- 
capped. An  experiment  with  such  a  bureau 
is  worthless  unless  it  is  done  on  a  large 
enough  scale  to  get  definite  results. 


50  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

Again,  employment  bureaus  should  have 
ample  funds  for  record  keeping.  To  give 
satisfaction  to  employers  it  is  essential  that 
the  bureau  should  know  whom  it  is  recom- 
mending for  a  particular  position,  and  it  can 
do  so  only  b}^  a  somewhat  elaborate  record. 
And  not  only  should  the  man 's  qualifications 
be  put  down,  and  the  jobs  that  are  vacant, 
but  some  follow-up  system  should  be  used  to 
find  out  when  a  client  secures  employment 
and  whether  he  keeps  it  permanently,  and 
when  jobs  are  filled,  so  as  not  to  send  a  man 
on  a  wild-goose  chase. 

If  we  had  had  but  one-fourth  as  many 
bureaus  as  we  have,  and  they  had  been  con- 
ducted properly,  we  should  now  have  some 
valuable  information  as  to  the  extent  of  un- 
employment and  unemployableness,  and 
their  causes.  But  as  it  is,  their  statistics  are 
almost  worthless. 

Two   limitations   in   regard   to   employ- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  51 

ment  bureaus  should  be  borne  in  mind. 
First,  they  do  not  create  opportunities  for 
work.  If  the  season  is  dull,  a  crisis  is  on,  or 
indeed  even  in  normal  times,  they  may  be 
obliged  to  tell  applicants  that  there  are  no 
jobs.  Again,  they  do  not  help  the  laborer 
immediately  and  directly.  Should  he  be  ab- 
solutely destitute,  it  will  go  hard  with  him 
till  he  gets  a  job  (if  he  should  be  so  fortu- 
nate) and  until  he  gets  his  pay  at  the  end  of 
a  week's  work,  perhaps.  Emplo^nnent 
agencies,  therefore,  no  matter  how  perfect, 
cannot  solve  the  whole  problem.  They  must 
be  supplemented  by  specially  created  oi)por- 
tunities  for  work,  and  by  unemployment  in- 
surance that  will  tide  over  the  temporarily 
idle  workman. 

II.     CO-OEDINATION 

Employment  agencies  have   failed  very 
largely  in  this  country  because  the  outlook 


52  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

of  their  directors  was  too  narrow  or  they 
were  hampered  in  the  amount  of  money 
placed  at  their  disposal.  No  bureau  can  be 
really  efficient  under  present  conditions  un- 
less it  makes  some  effort  to  remove  certain 
underlying  causes  of  unemplo}Tnent.  For 
unless  this  is  done  the  agency  will  be 
swamped  with  applicants,  especially  at  cer- 
tain seasons. 

One  of  the  measures  necessary  to  relieve 
unemployment  is  vocational  education  and 
vocational  guidance.  The  bureaus,  of 
course,  cannot  undertake  this  education. 
Other  departments  of  the  State  can  best  do 
that.  But  industrial  education  is  useless  un- 
less there  is  a  wise  ratio  maintained  between 
the  supply  and  the  demand  in  a  particular 
sphere.  For  commercial  schools  to  turn  out 
hundreds  of  stenographers  and  tj^ists  when 
only  scores  are  needed  in  the  business  world 
is  a  blunder  that  is  not  compensated  for  by 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  53 

the  efficiency  of  their  training.  They  will 
suffer  as  much  as  the  inefficient. 

A  certain  vocational  guidance  is,  there- 
fore, necessary  if  industrial  education  is  to 
be  successful.  And  the  employment  bureau 
is  the  logical  source  of  such  guidance.  With 
proper  records,  a  close  touch  kept  with  the 
business  community,  and  a  wide  outlook 
upon  conditions,  the  bureau  should  be  able 
to  advise  wisely  the  individual  and  the  de- 
partment of  education.  Harmonious  rela- 
tions should  be  established  between  the  em- 
plojonent  agency  and  the  school  board,  and 
individual  pupils  should  be  encouraged  to 
go  to  the  bureau  for  consultation  as  to  their 
life-work.  Such  a  correlation  of  govern- 
ment departments  would  add  immensely  to 
the  efficiency  of  all. 

But  it  is  in  the  field  of  co-ordinating  sea- 
sonal occupations  that  the  employment 
agencies  could  do  most  to  increase  their  ef- 


54.  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ficiency.  Unfortunately,  there  are  many  in- 
dustries that  can  work  only  a  part  of  the 
year.  Agriculture,  the  most  important  of  all 
industries,  is  at  the  same  time  the  obvious 
example  of  part-time  employment.  The  win- 
ter is  comparatively  dull,  then  comes  spring 
with  its  ploughing  and  planting,  summer 
with  its  cultivation,  and  fall  with  its  har- 
vesting. Many  more  hands  are  needed  in 
spring  and  fall  than  in  winter  or  summer. 
What  are  they  to  do  in  between  ?  The  build- 
ing and  garment  trades,  canning,  logging  are 
all  similarly  affected. 

Where  the  demands  of  a  particular  indus- 
try, such  as  loading  and  unloading  vessels, 
varies  from  day  to  day,  the  number  of  men 
required  will  vary.  But  the  number  of  men 
led  to  depend  upon  that  industry  is  some- 
times increased  by  the  method  of  hiring  be- 
yond the  total  number  ever  employed  on  the 
busiest  day.    If  ten  thousand  men,  say,  are 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  55 

employed  regularly,  and  then  at  busy  times 
others  taken  on  according  to  need,  the  total 
number  depending  upon  the  industry  would 
be  the  greatest  number  ever  used.  But  if 
there  is  no  nucleus  regularly  employed,  each 
man  needed  being  hired  by  the  day,  a  con- 
stant variation  in  the  force  is  introduced. 
The  ten  thousand  who  are  needed  even  on 
dull  days  will  not  always  be  the  same  ten 
thousand.  The  260,000  working  days  a 
month  for  such  a  force  will  be  distributed, 
perhaps,  among  thirteen  thousand  men,  giv- 
ing each  five  days  a  week  rather  than  afford- 
ing ten  thousand  full  time.  In  this  way  a 
larger  number  of  men  will  be  supported  on 
part-time  wages  than  is  really  needed  to  do 
the  work. 

There  are  two  objects,  therefore,  at  which 
we  should  aim:  (1)  such  a  reorganization  of 
industry  as  will  avoid  as  far  as  possible  sea- 
sonal fluctuations;  and  (2)  such  a  co-ordina- 


56  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

tion  of  industries  as  will  insure  that  the 
slack  season  of  one  will  correspond  with  the 
brisk  season  of  another. 

Part  of  the  seasonal  fluctuations  can  be 
handled  only  by  a  thorough  education  of  the 
consumers.  An  almost  unanimous  demand 
for  straw  hats  or  winter  clothes  at  a  particu- 
lar date  may  cause  complications  in  the  trade 
that  produce  a  severe  hardship  for  the  work- 
ers. There  is  apt  to  be  excessive  overtime  at 
one  season  and  part-time  or  unemployment 
at  another.  As  a  nation  we  want  things  done 
too  quickly.  The  demand  for  rapid  prosecu- 
tion of  some  public  building,  for  instance, 
may  mean  the  importation  of  thousands  of 
laborers  who  will  be  stranded  when  the  job 
is  finished.  From  the  standpoint  of  national 
efficiency,  it  would  be  better  to  use  the  local 
labor  supply  up  to  its  limit  for  a  longer  time. 

Emplojrment  bureaus,  it  is  true,  cannot  do 
much  directly  to  produce  such  results.    They 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  57 

can,  however,  furnish  information  that  will 
prove  effective  ammunition  for  others  and 
ultimately  lead  to  legislation.  For  stringent 
laws  against  overtime  would  force  employ- 
ers to  a  wiser  planning  of  production. 

But  in  the  matter  of  co-ordinating  indus- 
tries, the  employment  bureaus  should  be  able 
to  do  much.  With  their  knowledge  of  labor 
conditions  they  can  most  wisely  advise  the 
seasonally  employed  where  they  can  get 
work.  More  than  this,  however,  being  in 
contact  with  employers  they  can  frequently 
suggest  ways  and  means  of  limiting  seasonal 
fluctuations.  It  is  probable  that  if  a  thor- 
ough study  of  agricultural  conditions  were 
made  from  this  standpoint,  a  combination  of 
crops  could  be  worked  out  for  each  section 
that  would  materially  lessen  the  present 
variation  in  demand  for  labor.  Sometimes, 
too,  by  the  combination  of  industries,  a  large 
force  can  be  profitably  emjDloyed  almost  the 


58  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

whole  year.  A  familiar  example  of  this  is 
the  coal  and  ice  trade,  so  often  found  in 
humorous  proximity;  but  there  are  many 
other  applications,  and  employment  bureaus 
projDerly  conducted  ought  to  be  able  to  point 
them  out.  Thus  in  some  of  the  country  dis- 
tricts of  Germany  bricklayers  do  butchering 
during  the  winter  when  they  cannot  work  at 
their  principal  trade. 

III.     UNEMPLOYMENT  INSURANCE 

With  the  most  perfect  co-ordination  pos- 
sible, however,  there  will  still  be  large  num- 
bers who  will  find  themselves  out  of  work. 
And  vdth  the  most  efficient  management  pos- 
sible of  employment  bureaus,  it  will  often  be 
several  days  before  they  can  secure  other 
positions.  In  the  meantime,  and  before  they 
get  paid  in  their  new  jobs,  what  are  they  to 
do  I    If  they  have  saved  enough  to  tide  them 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  59 

over,  well  and  good.  But  if  they  did  not 
have  sufficient  foresight,  or  strength  of  will, 
or  a  high  enough  salary  to  save,  what  then  ? 

Heretofore,  such  persons  have  been  left 
dependent  upon  voluntary  charity.  But  de- 
spite previous  failures,  some  far-seeing  stu- 
dents believe  that  the  real  solution  to  the 
problem  must  come  from  social  insurance. 
(Cf.  Eubinow,  Social  Insurance,  N.  Y., 
1913.)  Great  Britain  was  the  first  nation  to 
make  trial  on  any  comprehensive  scale  of 
compulsory  social  insurance  for  unemploy- 
ment, but  the  war  intervened  before  the  plan 
had  been  in  operation  long  enough  to  prove 
or  disprove  its  practicability. 

The  British  system  required  a  contribu- 
tion from  the  employer,  the  employee  and 
the  State.  In  the  case  of  low  risk  industries 
or  individuals,  a  rebate  was  allowed  where 
continuous  employment  could  be  proved.  A 
total  of  fifteen  weeks  was  the  limit  for  which 


60  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

assistance  could  be  demanded  in  any  one 
year. 

There  are  certain  serious  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  successful  unemployment  insurance, 
but  they  are  not  insuperable.  At  present, 
with  our  defective  statistics,  the  calculation 
of  the  risk  is  impossible;  but  a  system  of 
relative  grants  could  be  devised  against  ex- 
ceptional conditions  and  as  our  statistics  be- 
came fuller  we  could  perfect  the  regulations. 

The  chief  difficulty  is  that  the  nature  of 
the  risk  evades  definition.  In  the  case  of  em- 
ployers'  liability,  old  age,  sickness  or  acci- 
dent insurance,  there  are  objective  facts  that 
can  be  determined  with  sufficient  certainty. 
Malingering  may  be  possible,  but  it  can  be 
guarded  against  to  a  large  extent.  But  when 
it  is  a  question  of  a  man  being  out  of  work, 
is  the  voluntarilj^  unemployed  to  be  subsi- 
dized as  well  as  others  1  If  not,  how  is  he  to 
be  distinguished? 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  61 

Again,  if  professional  loafers  are  ex- 
cluded, what  is  to  be  done  about  the  man  who 
voluntarily  quits  work  on  a  strike  ?  The  em- 
ployers do  not  wish  to  contribute  to  a  fund 
that  can  be  used  against  them  if  strikers  are 
to  be  paid  from  it,  and  workmen  do  not  wish 
to  contribute  if  they  are  not  to  be  paid. 

Or  if  a  man  quits  work  for  some  personal 
reason  affecting  him  individually,  is  he  to  be 
paid  ?  If  it  is  on  account  of  long  hours,  un- 
sanitary conditions,  and  so  on,  it  will  affect 
others,  too;  but  should  others  be  obliged  to 
contribute  to  a  fund  that  will  humor  his 
whim  or  personal  dislike  for  his  employer? 

The  answer  seems  to  be  that  social  insur- 
ance is  not  a  panacea.  No  one  piece  of  legis- 
lation, whether  it  be  unemployment  insur- 
ance or  anything  else,  can  operate  success- 
fully by  itself.  There  must  be  many  mutu- 
ally helpful  institutions  to  make  any  one 
attain  efficiency. 


63  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

Hence  in  the  case  of  unemployment  insur- 
ance, some  system  of  arbitration  would  be 
needed  if  strikers  are  to  enjoy  the  benefits. 
And  to  distinguish  between  the  voluntarily 
and  the  involuntarily  unemployed,  the 
bureau  would  need  some  sort  of  work  test. 
If  an  applicant  for  insurance  refused  to 
work  for  a  private  employer  when  the  op- 
portunity was  offered  him,  he  should  forfeit 
his  right  to  insurance.  Further,  if  he  does 
not  obtain  such  employment  within  a  reason- 
able time,  he  should  be  sent  to  some  govern- 
ment institution  where  he  can  get  work.  For 
the  professional  loafers  there  should  be  other 
institutions  furnishing  the  necessary  dis- 
cipline. 

We  are  led,  therefore,  to  the  establishment 
of  governmental  agencies  to  make  work  for 
the  willing  and  to  force  work  from  the  un- 
willing. These  will  be  considered  in  the  fol- 
lowing chapters. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE  state's  duty  TO  THE  UNEMPLOYABLE — 
THE   CAPABLE 

WE  have  proceeded  thus  far  in  our  ar- 
gument :  The  laborer  has  a  right  to 
work.  But  the  duty  corresponding  to  the 
laborer's  right  to  work  cannot  rest  upon  the 
individual  employer  as  such.  It  is  useless 
to  urge  upon  employers,  who  have  to  cut  ex- 
penses as  far  as  possible,  to  take  on  more 
men.  They  simply  cannot  do  it,  and  as  a 
consequence  we  cannot  look  to  them  for  any 
help  in  diminishing  the  number  of  unem- 
ployed. Merel}^  individual  efforts  cannot 
make  this  parable  of  the  laborers  in  the 
vineyard  an  anachronism.  Unless  the  State 
steps  in  to  handle  the  situation,  there  will 

63 


64  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

continue  to  be  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men 
of  whom  it  may  be  asked,  *'Why  stand  you 
here  all  the  day  idle?"  and  always  the  an- 
swer will  be,  **  Because  no  man  hath  hired 
us." 

Insurance  against  unemployment  is  one 
way  in  which  the  State  may  deal  with  the 
problem  of  unemplojrment.  But  it  has  many 
serious  defects.  One  drawback  is  that  the 
amount  given  per  week  (about  $1.75  in  Eng- 
land) must  inevitably  be  too  small  to  buy 
even  the  barest  necessaries  of  life.  And  the 
doling  out  of  such  pittances,  even  though 
they  did  come  partly  from  the  enforced  sav- 
ings of  the  laborers  themselves,  would  be  ac- 
companied by  many  of  the  demoralizing  ef- 
fects of  charity.  Those  whose  standard  was 
low  would  be  inclined  to  rest  content  with 
the  pension  and  would  not  seek  earnestly 
enough  for  work. 

More  fundamental,  however,  is  the  objec- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  65 

tion  that  this  is  an  unproductive  spending  of 
past  accumulation,  and  so  cannot  be  a  real 
solution  of  the  problem.  It  does  not  touch 
the  heart  of  the  question.  The  machinery  is 
simply  changed  a  little  from  that  now  in  use. 
The  fact  remains  that  these  unemployed 
would  still  be  a  burden  upon  the  employed. 
Only  the  finding  of  productive  employment 
can  be  considered  a  satisfactory  meeting  of 
the  situation.  Anything  short  of  this  is 
merely  patchwork. 

The  finding  of  such  work  can  be  done 
partly  by  well-organized  employment  bu- 
reaus. To  bring  the  laborer  and  the  job  to- 
gether, Federal,  State  and  municipal  em- 
ployment bureaus  can  do  something,  but  not 
everything.  Such  institutions  are  powerless 
to  create  work,  and  this  is  necessary.  They 
have  their  sphere  of  usefulness,  but  some- 
thing more  radical  is  needed.  Even  with  the 
most  perfect  employment  bureaus  in  the 


66  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

world,  the  only  information  possible  to  give 
many  seekers  would  be  that  there  was  no 
work  for  them.  There  would  still  be  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  men  standing  all  the 
day  idle  because  no  man  had  hired  them. 

We  do  not  know  what  percentage  of  the 
whole  that  would  be,  but  there  are  many  in- 
dications that  it  would  be  very  large.  Even 
in  Germany,  the  land  of  efficiency,  employ- 
ment bureaus  (according  to  Peter  Bonn, 
Das  Arheitshaus  oJine  Zwang,  pp.  318ff. : 
Hamm,  Westf.,  1911)  can  find  work  for  only 
about  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  applicants.  And 
this  number  should  probably  be  materially 
reduced  by  subtracting  those  who  find  only 
temporary  employment  and  who  are  soon 
discharged  for  incompetence. 

In  the  first  two  weeks  of  its  existence,  the 
New  York  public  employment  bureau  re- 
ceived 6,232  applications  for  employment 
and  only  360  calls  from  employers.     {Am. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  67 

Labor  Leg.  Bev.,  Nov.,  1915,  p.  543.)  The 
postal  experiment  of  the  Federal  authori- 
ties in  New  York  State,  between  April  22, 
1915,  and  October  1, 1915,  placed  only  13,391 
out  of  49,544  applicants.  Throughout  the 
whole  country  under  the  same  experiment, 
there  were  125,643  applicants  and  29,136  po- 
sitions filled.  (U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Sta- 
tistics, Monthly  Bulletin,  Nov.,  1916,  p.  20.) 
Such  figures  should  be  discounted,  too,  if 
they  are  no  more  reliable  than  those  of  many 
other  employment  agencies.  Thus  a  com- 
mittee of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature 
found  that  out  of  500  men  reported  placed 
by  a  Boston  bureau  only  180  had  actually 
received  jobs,  and  only  25  obtained  work  for 
more  than  three  months.  (Margaret  Nash, 
"Municipal  Employment  Bureaus,"  in  Na- 
tional Municipal  Bevietv,  July,  1915,  p.  433, 
quoting  pp.  74-76  of  the  Committee's 
Report.) 


68  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

Competitive,  privately  conducted  indus- 
try, therefore,  will  not  employ  all  our  work- 
men. But  this  much  is  certain,  that  if  a  na- 
tion cannot  set  its  idle  hands  to  work  it  is 
not  efficiently  organized.  It  used  to  be 
thought  that  there  was  only  a  certain  amount 
of  work  to  be  done,  and  that  therefore  it  was 
a  good  thing  from  the  laborer's  standpoint 
to  loaf  on  a  job  in  order  to  make  it  last 
longer.  But  there  is  really  much  more  work 
than  will  ever  be  accomplished. 

If  we  take  first  the  simple  case  of  a  fam- 
ily, we  shall  understand  the  situation  better. 
A  housewife's  work  is  never  done.  There  is 
always  something  else  to  do,  and  she  can  al- 
ways advantageously  put  idle  hands  to  work 
rather  than  give  them  food  while  they  do 
nothing.  Government  is  only  large  house- 
keeping. The  size  of  the  operations  compli- 
cates matters  but  does  not  essentially  alter 
them.    It  is  always  better  for  society  to  put 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  69 

men  to  work  than  to  feed  them  in  idleness. 

Or,  again,  take  the  case  of  a  religious  com- 
munity. Whoever  heard  of  there  not  being 
enough  work  to  go  round?  Why,  even  the 
largest  of  them,  running  up  into  the  scores 
of  thousands,  are  continually  crying  for 
more  recruits.  Their  trouble  is  too  much 
work,  not  too  little.  The  fields  are  white 
unto  harvest,  but  the  laborers  are  few.  We 
do  not  need  to  pray  for  harvest  and  for  work, 
but  for  some  system  whereby  we  can  utilize 
all  the  laborers  we  have. 

A  fact  that  seems  to  be  overlooked  in  much 
talk  upon  this  subject  is  that  these  idle  men 
are  actually  being  supported  now.  It  is  true, 
they  are  not  getting  enough  to  maintain  a 
decent  standard  for  a  self-respecting  work- 
man, but  they  are  getting  enough  food  and 
clothing  and  shelter  to  keep  body  and  soul 
together.  Whence  does  it  come  ?  Not  from 
their  own  efforts,  for  they  are  doing  nothing, 


70  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

and  in  the  majority  of  cases  their  savings 
are  exhausted.  It  must  come,  therefore, 
from  the  product  of  those  who  are  still  work- 
ing. Now  if  this  were  taken  in  the  way  of 
taxes  and  used  to  give  these  men  employ- 
ment, they  would  make  some  return  to  the 
State,  be  kept  self-respecting,  and  could 
reach  a  higher  standard. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  taxes  would  fall 
mainly  upon  the  poor  people,  whereas  the 
charitable  funds  from  which  they  are  at 
present  helped  come  chiefly  from  the 
wealthy.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  prin- 
cipally the  poor  who  help  the  poor.  The 
struggling  corner-groceryman,  the  fellow 
laborer,  the  friend  only  less  poor  than  the 
idle,  are  now  the  chief  contributors,  and  they 
are  at  present  giving  more  than  they  would 
give  in  taxes  under  the  system  advocated. 

That  this  giving  of  work  by  the  State  is 
the  real  solution  of  the  problem  is  being 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  71 

more  and  more  clearly  recognized  by  ad- 
vanced social  workers.  Tims  the  Chicago 
Municipal  Markets  Commission  recom- 
mended that  public  works  and  improve- 
ments should  be  opened  up  during  the  slack 
seasons  of  private  enterprise,  and  that  work 
should  be  created  for  the  unemployed  by 
public  and  private  industry.  (Journal  of 
Criminal  Law  and  Criminology,  July,  1915, 
p.  299.) 

Idaho  has  shown  its  recognition  of  the 
right  to  work  by  providing  sixty  days '  public 
work  for  all  citizens  who  cannot  find  other 
employment.  {Am.  Lab.  Leg.  Rev.,  Dec, 
1915,  p.  763.)  This  is  pitifully  inadequate, 
but  it  is  encouraging  as  indicating  the  trend 
of  thought.  It  exhibits  a  growing  sense  of 
the  meaning  and  importance  of  this  problem 
of  unemployment.  The  constitutionality  of 
the  law  is  being  tested,  but  while  the  move- 
ment can  be  retarded  by  an  adverse  decision 


72  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

it  cannot  be  killed.  One  generation  of 
judges  declared  unconstitutional  all  regula- 
tion of  the  labor  of  women  and  children,  only 
to  have  another  generation  reverse  its  ruling. 

When  the  constructive  statesman  under- 
takes to  furnish  this  work,  however,  he  finds 
that  he  is  dealing  with  two  essentially  dis- 
tinct classes  of  men. 

One  class  is  self-respecting,  honest  and  in- 
dustrious. The  men  who  form  it  could  be 
profitably  employed  in  private  industry  if 
there  were  only  a  place  for  them.  That  is  to 
say,  they  are  individually  about  as  efficient 
as  the  men  who  are  actually  employed.  If 
the  skill  of  the  entrepreneur  class  increased 
they  would  be  taken  on. 

The  other  class  is  more  or  less  completely 
down  and  out.  Its  members  have  some  de- 
fect that  renders  them  useless  to  the  private 
employer.  They  drink,  perhaps,  or  are  so 
lazy  that  it  would  take  more  in  foremen's 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  73 

wages  to  make  them  work  than  they  are 
worth,  or  they  are  dishonest,  or  quarrel- 
some. Sometimes  they  have  the  wanderlust, 
because  they  have  acquired  the  habit  from 
being  forced  from  one  place  to  another  in 
search  of  work.  Whether  their  defects  are 
curable  or  not,  they  cannot  be  used  in  com- 
petitive industry.  They  are  discards  thrown 
on  the  scrap  heap  to  rust  out  instead  of  wear- 
ing out. 

Evidently  the  method  of  dealing  with  each 
class  must  be  different.  It  is  so  radically 
different  that  the  discussion  of  the  second 
class  will  be  postponed  to  another  chapter. 
Now  we  take  up  the  question  as  to  what 
should  be  done  by  the  governmental  agencies 
to  create  work  for  the  self-respecting,  capa- 
ble unemployed. 

Tlie  first  problem  that  presents  itself  in 
this  connection  is :  what  kind  of  work  should 
be  given  I    Should  a  watch-maker  be  set  to 


74  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

making  watches,  should  a  clerk  keep  books, 
and  so  on  ?  Or  are  all  to  be  given  the  same 
kind  of  work?  Does  a  man's  right  to  work 
imply  a  right  to  the  kind  of  work  in  which 
he  has  specialized  ? 

It  would  be  useless  for  any  government  to 
attempt  giving  each  man  his  own  special 
kind  of  work  unless  it  were  frankly  and 
whole-heartedly  to  adopt  Socialism.  Per- 
haps even  then  it  could  not  be  done.  But  the 
right  to  work  does  not  imply  a  right  to  such 
special  work.  For  it  is  based  upon  the  right 
to  earn  one's  living,  and  if  this  opportunity 
is  given  in  one  way  rather  than  another,  the 
State  has  nevertheless  fulfilled  its  duty  in 
legal  justice. 

In  fact,  for  any  one  who  realizes  the  in- 
estimable value  of  personal  ambition  as  fos- 
tered by  a  competitive  organization  of  in- 
dustry, it  is  evident  that  the  work  given  by 
the  government  should  have  certain  draw- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  76 

backs  to  it  that  would  force  the  self-respect- 
ing workman  back  into  the  industrial  strug- 
gle. But  if  he  could  be  sure  of  a  permanent 
job  in  his  line  of  work  with  as  good  pay  as 
he  could  get  with  a  private  concern,  he  would 
want  to  stay  on  with  the  government. 

Perhaps  the  fact  of  making  this  govern- 
ment work  of  the  simplest  kind  and  largely 
uniform  for  all  will  be  sufficient  spur  to 
drive  men  back  into  competition.  If  not, 
then  other  means  must  be  devised. 

Just  what  that  work  should  be — building 
roads,  draining  swamps,  dredging  rivers — 
is  a  question  of  detail.  It  would  take  much 
thought  and  long  experimenting  and  many 
failures  to  work  out  a  comprehensive  scheme 
whereby  governmental  activities  would 
automatically  increase  in  slack  seasons  and 
times  of  industrial  depression,  and  decrease 
as  private  business  picked  up. 

Undoubtedly,  the  municipality,  the  State 


76  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

•and  the  national  government  should  each 
share  in  the  responsibility.  But  in  what  pro- 
portion? And  should  one  supervise  the 
work,  being  subsidized  by  the  others,  or 
should  each  one  do  its  own  work?  And  if 
one  is  to  do  it,  should  it  be  the  town,  State,  or 
Federal  government? 

These  are  difficult  questions,  but  they 
would  probably  be  answered  very  quickly  if 
the  effort  were  once  made  to  cope  with  the 
situation.  With  present  ■  knowledge,  how- 
ever, it  would  seem  that  certain  large  under- 
takings that  can  be  accomplished  only  by  the 
national  government  and  which  require 
large  quantities  of  unskilled  labor  might 
wisely  be  done  in  this  way.  There  are  proj- 
ects that  could  be  planned  ahead  and  carried 
out  just  as  the  labor  market  fluctuated. 

But  as  this  work  would  be  restricted  to 
certain  localities  and  transportation  would 
be  expensive,  a  more  localized  treatment  is 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  77 

desirable  under  normal  conditions.  Each 
township,  therefore,  should  have  some  sort 
of  simple  work  to  which  men  could  be  put 
when  they  could  find  nothing  else  to  do.  This 
might  take  the  form  of  opening  streets, 
cleaning  vacant  lots,  or  other  general  and 
necessary  works  of  municipal  improvement. 
Perhaps  the  simplest  work  would  be  the  cut- 
ting of  firewood  or  the  breaking  of  stones. 
The  latter,  particularly,  is  especially  suited 
to  this  variable  supply  of  labor.  It  requires 
practically  no  outlay  for  tools  or  materials, 
it  does  not  suffer  from  interruption,  and 
each  man's  work  is  independent  of  every 
other  man's.  What  each  man  does  is  easily 
measured ;  if  he  ** soldiers"  he  injures  no  one 
but  himself. 

The  question  of  providing  for  women  is 
harder.  Perhaps  plain  sewing  is  the  best 
solution.  This  requires  either  a  shop  and 
forewoman  or  the  distribution  of  work  in 


78  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

the  homes.  And  as  the  remuneration  for 
such  work  is  at  starvation  rates  now,  the 
State  would  be  ahnost  compelled  to  pay  more 
than  the  current  wages.  But  if  it  paid  more, 
how  could  it  induce  these  women  to  go  back 
into  the  competitive  field?  Undoubtedly 
stringent  minimum  wage  laws  regulating 
compensation  in  private  industry  would  be 
necessary  to  make  this  part  of  the  scheme 
effective. 

Whenever  men  or  women  apply  for  work 
or  assistance,  one  should  be  able  to  refer 
them  promptly  to  such  a  municipal  under- 
taking with  the  certain  knowledge  that  they 
will  be  adequately  taken  care  of.  For 
such  work  would  undoubtedly  take  up  what 
may  be  called  the  normally  unemployed. 

During  special  times  of  depression  these 
measures  should  be  supplemented  by  State 
road-building  or  other  undertakings,  and 
finally  by  national  work.    These,  however, 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  79 

should  be  last  resorts,  and  would  be  neces- 
sary only  in  times  of  national  crises. 

The  question  of  pay  is  an  important  one. 
If  the  men  given  work  in  this  way  are  paid 
just  as  much  as  they  would  get  in  private 
undertakings,  will  they  not  stay  on  with  the 
government?  And  if  they  do  stay  on,  will 
not  the  same  causes  that  operated  in  the  in- 
dustrial world  to  produce  this  fringe  of  un- 
employed produce  another  reserve  supply  of 
labor,  so  that  conditions  will  not  be  materi- 
ally improved  ? 

If  such  a  tendency  were  observed  in  any 
marked  degree,  then  wages  should  probably 
be  reduced  slightly  below  competitive  levels 
(we  assume  that  minimum  wage  laws  go 
hand  in  hand  with  the  specific  legislation  we 
are  advocating),  either  by  lowering  the  rate 
or  limiting  the  employment  given  to  part 
time.  This  latter  would  be  easy  in  municipal 
undertakings.    It  would  probably  be  the  bet- 


80  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ter  plan,  as  it  would  allow  an  opportunity 
for  seeking  jobs  competitively. 

Again,  it  may  be  asked,  would  not  tbe  gov- 
ernment be  competing  with  private  under- 
takings and  making  industrial  conditions 
harder?  There  are  two  reasons  why  this 
would  not  be  so.  'First,  the  governniient 
would  be  doing  work  in  a  field  where  it  al- 
ready had  a  monopoly,  as  road-building,  or 
where  it  might  very  wisely  be  given  one,  as 
in  breaking  stone. 

The  second  reason  is  that  the  removal  of 
such  a  supply  of  labor  from  the  industrial 
world  would  tend  to  raise  wages.  Employ- 
ers now  have  power  to  depress  wages  be- 
cause they  know  that  if  the  laborer  refuses 
work  at  the  wages  offered  he  can  probably 
get  nothing  else  to  do,  and  there  will  be  an- 
other who  will  accept  what  was  offered  to 
the  first  one.  Laborers  are  competing  to  get 
jobs,  but  employers  are  not  competing  to  get 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  81 

laborers.  Anything,  therefore,  that  tends  to 
increase  the  demand  for  labor  and  reduce 
the  supply,  as  the  creation  of  work  by  the 
government,  would  raise  wages  in  the  com- 
petitive sphere. 

Hence  in  three  ways  this  policy  of  making 
work  would  help  the  laboring  classes:  it 
would  relieve  them  of  much  of  the  burden  of 
supporting  the  unemployed;  it  would  in- 
crease the  security  of  their  employment ;  and 
it  would  tend  to  raise  their  wages. 

What  has  been  done  along  these  lines  by 
municipalities  will  be  found  in  the  survey  of 
the  American  Association  for  Labor  Legis- 
lation. (Am,  Lab.  Leg.  Rev.,  Nov.,  1915.) 
It  is  an  encouraging  beginning,  but  it  is  only 
a  beginning.  Much  remains  to  be  done. 
Courage  and  faith  are  necessary  to  face  the 
inevitable  difficulties  and  criticism  and  dis- 
couragements. 


CHAPTER  Y 

THE  state's  duty  TO  THE  UNEMPLOYABLE — 
THE  INCAPABLE 

THE  question  cf  securing  employment 
for  men  who  are  able  and  willing  to 
work,  however,  is  only  one  phase  of  the  prob- 
lem. There  is  also  a  vast  army  of  men  who 
are  unemployable  under  such  simple  condi- 
tions as  we  have  so  far  assumed.  It  will  do 
no  good  to  find  them  jobs  in  the  industrial 
world  because  they  cannot  keep  them.  They 
are  defective  in  some  way  that  makes  their( 
employment  unprofitable. 

A  few  years  ago  a  young  fellow  came  to 
me  seeking  help.  He  had  been  living  in  a 
bi^  Eastern  city,  but  had  pulled  out  to  get 
away  from  evil   companions.     For   some 

82 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  83 

years  he  had  been  drinking  heavily,  yet 
he  was  willing  to  break  with  home  and 
friends  in  an  effort  to  do  better.  It  was  a 
great  sacrifice  for  him  and  shows  that  he  was 
really  earnest  in  trying  to  reform. 

An  important  railroad  in  the  city  where  I 
then  was  happened  to  be  conducting  a  sort 
of  philanthropic  scrap-yard  to  help  absorb 
the  surplus  labor,  so  he  got  a  job  there.  To 
relieve  him  of  his  temptations  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, I  made  arrangements  to  draw  his  pay 
and  to  meet  all  his  expenses  so  that  he  should 
not  have  the  handling  of  money.  He  went  to 
work  on  Friday.  Monday  night  he  came  to 
me  drunk.  To  get  liquor,  he  had  played  a 
piano  and  sung  in  a  saloon.  Naturally  he 
lost  that  job — the  one  in  the  scrap-yard. 

For  a  week  or  so  he  half  starved.  Then  I 
managed  to  get  him  employment  in  a  lunch 
room.  He  worked  six  days.  At  the  end  of 
that  time  the  proprietor  asked  him  to  black 


84  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

his  shoes  for  him.  ^*I'll  black  your  eyes 
first,"  was  the  answer. 

The  next  place  he  found  work  was  in  a 
hospital.  In  about  two  months  he  went  on 
five  or  more  sprees.  Though  the  Sisters 
were  most  kind  to  him,  they  were  finally 
obliged  to  discharge  him.  Whereupon  he 
sold  his  clothes  and  everything  else  he  had 
that  was  marketable  to  buy  liquor,  and  cele- 
brated with  a  "glorious"  debauch. 

It  is  useless  to  get  such  a  man  a  job.  An 
employment  bureau  or  a  charitable  agency 
that  sends  such  men  to  its  clients  will  simply 
hurt  a  deserving  man's  chances  of  getting  a 
position  on  their  recommendation.  ~  And 
while  this  is  only  one  case,  it  is  typical  of  a 
very  large  number  of  those  out  of  work.  We 
do  not  know  what  percentage  of  the  unem- 
ployed belong  with  these  unemployables, 
but  it  is  probably  fifty  per  cent.  Certainly 
any  one  who  has  had  experience  in  charitable 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  85 

work  can  tell  of  hundreds  of  cases  duplicat- 
ing this  one  in  all  essentials. 

These  men  are  not  necessarily  physically 
unfit.  Many  of  them  are  perfectly  strong  in 
body.  Their  muscles  are  able  to  stand  hard 
work.  But  there  is  a  defect  somewhere  that 
renders  them  unemployable. 

This  unfitness  manifests  itself  in  many 
ways.  One  is  an  uncontrollable  desire  for 
liquor.  They  will  not,  perhaps  cannot,  keep 
away  from  it.  Sometimes  they  will  go  for 
weeks  or  months  without  touching  a  drop, 
and  then  at  a  crucial  moment  when  they 
should  be  steadier  than  ever,  because  their 
responsibilities  are  greater,  they  take  a  glass 
or  two  to  brace  them  up,  and  of  course  in- 
stead of  being  braced  up  they  and  their  re- 
solves collapse.  Industries  can 't  be  run  with 
such  people,  and  soon  they  find  themselves 
out  of  work.  Out  of  two  thousand  men  given 
medical  attention  at  the  New  York  Munici- 


86  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

pal  Lodging  House,  39  per  cent,  were  found 
to  be  suffering  from  alcoholism.  (American 
Labor  Legislation  Review,  November,  1915, 
p.  608.) 

Or  it  may  be  a  certain  quarrelsome  nature 
or  suspicious  disposition  that  makes  it  im- 
possible for  others  to  get  along  with  them. 
They  are  continually  taking  offense,  or 
scenting  injustice,  or  complaining  of  favor- 
itism. At  any  rate,  they  are  not  the  sort  of 
people  you  want  about  your  store  or  factory. 
They  drive  away  customers  and  demoralize 
their  fellow  employees.  If  ''it's  the  voice 
with  a  smile ' '  that  wins  out  in  a  telephone  ex- 
change, it's  the  man  with  a  grouch  that  loses 
there  and  elsewhere. 

Again,  it  may  be  a  disposition  to  "soldier. " 
Through  long  years  of  drifting  they  have  ac- 
quired ineradicable  habits  of  laziness.  To 
make  them  work  would  require  a  special 
foreman  to  stand  over  them  every  minute. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  87 

Or  they  are  always  late  in  getting  to  work  in 
the  morning.  Lacking  in  ambition,  they 
cannot  be  reached.  A  threat  of  discharge 
has  no  force.  The  only  thing  to  do  is  to 
*'fire"  them  before  they  demoralize  the 
other  employees. 

Others  have  caught  the  wanderlust.  They 
pass  from  one  job  to  another,  from  one  city 
to  another,  even  from  one  continent  to  an- 
other. After  a  month  or  so,  they  leave — not 
to  go  to  a  better  job,  but  simply  because  a 
few  weeks  in  one  place  is  all  they  can  stand. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  wisdom  in  the  old 
saying,  *^A  rolling  stone  gathers  no  moss." 
And  it  is  not  controverted  by  the  query, 
*  *  But  who  wants  to  gather  moss  ?  "  If  a  man 
is  to  be  an  efficient  social  being,  he  must 
gather  moss  in  the  sense  of  storing  up  good, 
steady  habits,  accumulating  capital  and  be- 
ing able  to  support  himself  decently.  Those 
who  don't  are  undesirable  citizens,  chron- 


88  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

ically  out  of  work  because  they  are  unem- 
ployable. 

Most  of  these  men  profess  to  be  willing  to 
work  and  actually  will  work  for  a  short  time. 
But  quite  a  number  of  others  are  profes- 
sional loafers.  Thej^  will  not  even  start  at  a 
job.  They  are  determined  parasites  who  live 
by  begging  from  soft-hearted  people. 

In  addition  to  these  moral  defectives — for 
temperance,  industry,  and  stability  are 
moral  qualities — there  are  some  who  are 
physically  unfit.  Probably  about  ten  per 
cent,  of  the  idle  can  do  no  work,  and  about 
ten  per  cent,  more  are  capable  only  of  light 
work.  (Cf.  Am.  Lab.  Leg.  Rev.,  Nov.,  1915, 
p.  606.)  Of  these,  some  are  mentally  handi- 
capped, either  by  congenital  or  acquired  de- 
fects, some  are  sickly  and  some  are  de- 
formed. 

The  causes  operating  to  produce  these  de- 
fects in  unemployables  are  partly  individual 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  89 

and  partly  social.  Some  of  them  can  be 
eliminated  and  some  cannot,  but  every  effort 
should  be  made  to  reduce  them  as  far  as 
possible. 

The  saloons,  of  course,  are  among  the  most 
fertile  causes  of  unemployableness.  But 
they  are  as  frequently,  perhaps,  a  symptom 
as  a  cause.  If  the  taste  were  not  developed 
by  vicious  companions,  overwork,  worry, 
perhaps  heredity,  they  would  not  flourish  to 
the  same  extent. 

These  and  all  other  morally  defective  un- 
employables  can  be  guarded  against  or 
helped  by  all  institutions  that  make  for  char- 
acter-building. Schools,  churches,  and  all 
other  moral  agencies  should  face  the  prob- 
lem and  work  towards  its  solution  under  the 
encouragement  of  the  government. 

Sometimes  long  seasons  of  unemployment 
make  a  man  a  chronic  loafer.  Men  quickly 
lose  the  habit  of  work.    One  who  has  spent 


90  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

several  seasons  wandering  from  place  to 
place  becomes  unfit  for  steady  occupation. 
The  supply  of  such  men  would  be  stopped  by 
taking  care  of  unemploj^ment  and  under-em- 
ployment  as  suggested.  Industries  operat- 
ing only  a  part  of  the  year,  "blind-alley" 
trades,  casual  jobs,  lack  of  industrial  educa- 
tion, are  all  partly  responsible,  and  should 
be  done  away  with  as  quickly  and  as  far  as 
possible.  Trade  schools,  vocational  guid- 
ance, co-ordination  of  industries — all  this 
would  help  considerably. 

Other  unemployables  are  ground  out  by 
our  industrial  system  that  overworks  and 
underpays  its  employees  and  then  scraps 
them  for  society  to  care  for.  This  must  be 
remedied  by  proper  hours  and  wages,  good 
sanitary  conditions,  and  preventive  meas- 
ures against  occupational  diseases.  A  devel- 
opment of  preventive  medicine  will  go  far 
towards  decreasing  this  class. 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  91 

But  even  after  everytlimg  possible  has 
been  done  along  these  lines,  we  shall  still 
have  scores  of  thousands  of  unemployables. 
Man  is  endowed  with  free  will  and  the  mil- 
lennium will  not  come  in  our  day.  With  all 
the  safeguards  that  the  State  and  other 
agencies  can  provide,  there  will  still  be  im- 
proper homes  turning  out  worthless  chil- 
dren. There  will  be  diseased  fathers  and 
mothers  transmitting  blindness  or  imbecil- 
ity or  weak  nervous  systems  to  the  offspring 
they  were  unworthy  to  have.  And  if  we  had 
the  most  drastic  eugenic  legislation  possible, 
there  would  yet  be  children  from  good  homes 
perversely  choosing  the  worse  way. 

Preventive  philanthropy  is  good.  It  is 
wise  to  get  down  to  the  roots  of  the  social 
weeds  in  order  to  destroy  them  altogether, 
instead  of  contenting  ourselves  with  cutting 
off  the  tops,  knowing  that  for  every  one  we 
cut  another  will  grow.    But  in  this  case  we 


92  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

cannot  entirely  destroy  the  roots,  and  there 
will  always  be  large  numbers  of  unem- 
ployables.  What,  then,  are  we  to  do  to  take 
care  of  them?  How  are  we  to  keep  them 
from  demoralizing  the  whole  industrial  sys- 
tem, as  at  present? 

First  must  come  the  clear  conception  that 
it  is  a  question  of  unemploydbleness,  and  not 
merely  one  of  unemployment.  We  must 
recognize  that  it  is  useless  to  find  ordinary 
jobs  for  these  men,  because  on  account  of 
one  or  other  of  the  defects  mentioned,  they 
are  round  pegs  that  cannot  fit  into  the  square 
holes  of  steady  competitive  industry.  Their 
unemployment  is  merely  a  symptom,  a  result 
of  their  unemployableness.  To  be  effective, 
any  remedy  must  treat  them  as  a  class  apart. 
Special  conditions  must  be  created  in  which 
they  can  be  employed,  just  as  special  condi- 
tions are  created  for  the  blind. 

The  State  should  provide  special  institu- 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  93 

tions  where  such  persons  can  be  employed 
up  to  their  full  capacity,  whatever  that  may 
be.  It  is  better  for  all  concerned  that  they 
should  be  so  occupied.  They  will  be  less  of 
a  drag  upon  the  community,  they  will  have 
less  opportunity  to  demoralize  industrial 
conditions,  they  will  be  happier,  and  some  of 
them  will  grow  out  of  this  class  and  be  able 
to  go  back  into  the  competitive  fight  with 
self-respect  regained.  They  are  being  sup- 
ported now  without  making  any  contribution 
to  the  funds  of  society.  Why  not  devise 
some  means  whereby  they  will  be  made  at 
least  partially  self-supporting  ? 

There  should  be  State  farms  and  factories 
to  which  those  who  have  proved  themselves 
unemployable  in  ordinary  competitive  in- 
dustry may  be  committed.  A  great  many  of 
those  who  are  now  living  on  charity  could 
be  made  self-supporting  if  they  had  the 
proper  discipline.    They  are  not  criminals. 


94  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

nor  are  they  so  defective  mentally  as  to  be 
feeble-minded.  But  they  are  lacking  in  cer- 
tain essential  requirements  for  competitive 
industry,  and  therefore  they  should  be  sep- 
arated into  a  class  by  themselves,  apart  from 
criminals,  apart  from  imbeciles,  apart  from 
the  perfectly  capable.  Their  own  good  and 
the  good  of  society  demands  this  just  as 
much  in  their  case  as  in  that  of  the  insane 
or  vicious,  though  there  should  be  no 
stigma  attaching  to  these  institutions  as  to 
the  ordinary  workhouse,  their  function  be- 
ing educative,  not  punitive.  If  necessary, 
the  merely  lazy,  or  surly,  or  wandering 
might  be  separated  from  the  drunkards. 
They  can  be  cured  more  easily,  perhaps,  and 
once  cured  should  be  free  to  go  back  into  the 
world  to  earn  their  living. 

The  recommendation  of  St.  Paul,  that 
those  who  will  not  work  should  not  eat, 
should  be  rigidly  enforced.    Vagrants  and 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  95 

beggars  should  disappear  from  our  streets. 
Those  who  can  work  should  be  made  to  work 
in  these  institutions,  and  those  who  are  in- 
capable of  working  should  be  suppoited  by 
charit}^  grants. 

Such  institutions  are  not  entirely  experi- 
mental. In  1910,  New  York  provided  for  a 
Farm  Colony  for  Inebriates,  and  a  year 
later  for  a  Farm  Colony  for  Tramps  and 
Vagrants.  Wonderful  progress,  too,  has 
been  made  in  the  care  of  one  special  class  of 
defectives — the  feeble-minded. 

Besides  this,  however,  for  several  centu- 
ries we  have  had  institutions  for  woiuen  that 
demonstrate  the  possibility  of  such  work. 
Scattered  all  over  this  country  are  homes 
conducted  by  the  Good  Shepherd  Sisters  for 
the  purpose  of  bringing  back  to  ways  of  self- 
respect  delinquent  girls  and  women.  There 
is  a  widespread  conviction  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  reform  these  women.    It  is  hard,  but 


96  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

it  is  not  impossible,  as  these  Sisters  have 
shown. 

The  visitor  to  one  of  these  institutions 
finds  an  air  of  peace  and  quiet  and  content- 
ment, a  genuine  spirit  of  the  Good  Shep- 
herd, that  is  in  wonderful  contrast  to  the  life 
the  former  companions  of  these  women  are 
leading  a  few  blocks  away — women  who  can- 
not hide  the  misery  of  their  lives  though  they 
paint  an  inch  thick  and  laugh  from  ear  to 
ear. 

What  has  wrought  this  change  in  women 
who  were  unemployable  except  in  the  world 
of  vice  ?  What  has  made  them  self-respect- 
ing and  largely  self-supporting?  Partly 
the  example  of  wonderful  sacrifice  and  de- 
votion exhibited  by  so  many  good,  pure 
women  consecrating  their  lives  to  these  for- 
mer outcasts,  and  doing  it  not  for  a  salary, 
not  to  be  talked  about  in  philanthropic  cir- 
cles, but  for  the  love  of  Christ;  partly  it  is 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  97 

the  blessing  of  regular  work,  each  duty  be- 
gun and  ended  with  the  precision  of  clock- 
work ;  partly  it  is  the  effect  of  physical  clean- 
liness, fresh  air  and  good  food  in  quieting 
nerves  and  allaying  the  fever  of  excitement ; 
but  above  all,  it  is  the  effect  of  prayer  and 
the  Sacraments.  Each  morning  an  hour  is 
spent  in  silent  communion  with  God,  and  at 
appointed  intervals  during  the  day  the  soul 
is  brought  back  to  a  sense  of  God's  presence. 
That  contact  with  unseen  power  gives  a 
strength  that  no  merely  ethical  consideration 
can  hope  to  rival. 

Why  cannot  we  have  some  such  homes 
for  men  who  are  otherwise  unemployable? 
Why  is  there  not  some  place  where  we  can 
send  the  drunken,  demoralized  man  as  we 
can  send  these  women?  Why  is  there  not 
a  brotherhood  conducting  Good  Shepherd 
homes  for  men  ? 

There  are  to-day  walking  the  streets  of 


98  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

our  big  cities  thousands  of  men  who  would 
develop  into  self-respecting  citizens  if  they 
only  had  some  such  chance.  I  have  had  men 
come  to  me  who  knew  that  they  could  not  of 
themselves  keep  away  from  liquor,  and  ask  to 
be  put  in  such  an  institution.  Others  would 
have  to  be  committed  by  legal  authority.  But 
whether  admitted  or  committed,  in  the  ma- 
jority of  cases  they  would  not  fail  to  profit. 
Give  them  a  religious  atmosphere,  certain 
religious  exercises,  steady  employment,  and 
they  will  brace  up  wonderfully.  If  fallen 
women  can  be  reclaimed,  so  can  fallen  men ; 
and  the  percentage  saved  would  probably 
be  higher  among  men  than  women. 

Religion  and  regularity  would  be  their  sal- 
vation, as  it  has  been  the  salvation  of  so 
many  women.  Alone  they  can  attain  to  nei- 
ther; in  an  institution  with  the  moral  force 
of  custom  and  numbers  they  could  get  both. 
It  is  a  great  deal  easier  for  a  man  with  a 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  99 

flabby  will  to  rise  at  five  o'clock  when  two 
hundred  others  do  it  with  him,  than  when 
he  is  by  himself ;  it  is  easy  for  a  man  to  go 
to  Mass  every  morning  when  the  chapel  is 
in  the  same  building  and  all  attend.  Yet 
all  these  practices  will  have  a  tremendous  in- 
fluence in  bringing  about  a  change  from  old, 
demoralizing  habits.  Put  the  worst  drunk- 
ard in  the  world  in  an  institution  where 
saintly  men  are  serving  him  for  God's  sake, 
and  where  he  sees  hundreds,  who  were  once 
as  bad  as  he  was,  now  leading  simple,  ab- 
stemious, prayerful,  regular  lives,  and  he 
will  inevitably  be  affected  for  good;  if  he 
be  not  the  worst  drunkard,  but  only  lazy,  he 
will  respond  wonderfully,  provided  he  have 
half  a  will  to  reform. 

But  the  physical  side  would  not  be  neg- 
lected. Early  rising,  personal  cleanliness, 
wholesome  food  at  regular  intervals,  would 
contribute  their  share  towards  rehabilitating 


100  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

these  derelicts.  By  constant  repetition  for 
months  or  years  these  actions  would  become 
habitual,  just  as  their  former  evil  customs 
had  become  so.  Every  good  action  deliber- 
ately willed  would  weaken  the  hold  of  the 
bad  habit.  And  the  weakening  would  be  by 
a  force  equivalent  in  its  proportion  to  the 
number  and  intensity  of  the  evil  actions  pro- 
ducing the  habit.  When  the  good  actions 
equalled  the  bad  actions  in  number  and  in- 
tensity, the  evil  habit  would  have  been  de- 
stroyed. 

There  are  innumerable  institutions  where 
those  who  can  afford  it  are  paying  high 
prices  to  be  cured  of  drunkenness.  This  re- 
ligious institution  would  be  worth  them  all 
in  dealing  with  the  drink  habit  and  all  other 
moral  defects  that  go  to  make  men  unem- 
ployable. To  feel  that  they  are  consecrating 
themselves  to  God,  that  they  are  atoning  for 
their  sins,  that  they  are  really  drawing  close 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  101 

to  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  would  have  more 
effect  in  reforming  their  lives  than  all  the 
drugs  in  creation. 

It  is  possible  that  the  State  might  accom- 
plish a  great  deal  without  this  religious  ele- 
ment. But  there  is  no  good  reason  for  fore- 
going it.  The  State  is  now  subsidizing  simi- 
lar institutions  or  directly  employing  sister- 
hoods to  conduct  them.  Why  not,  then,  util- 
ize this  powerful  religious  motive  in  dealing 
with  a  problem  that  requires  aU  the  forces 
possible  to  attain  a  real  success? 

We  should,  then,  recognize  that  of  those 
out  of  work  a  large  percentage  have  physical 
or  moral  defects  that  make  them  unemploy- 
able. Therefore  work  should  be  provided 
for  them  in  special  governmental  institu- 
tions, where  the  very  best  methods  will  be 
employed  to  make  them  self-respecting  and 
self-supporting. 


UHIVERSHY  OF  SOUTHERN  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DUTY  OF  THE  Iin)iyH)UAL 

EVERY  man,  then,  has  a  right  to  the  op- 
portunity to  work.  And  the  correlative 
duty  of  furnishing  this  opportunity,  under 
a  wage  regime,  falls  upon  the  State.  This 
implies  emplojnnent  bureaus,  correlation 
of  industries  and  compulsory  insurance  for 
those  who  are  temporarily  out  of  work. 
Those  who  are  permanently  unemployed, 
whether  competent  or  incompetent,  should 
be  furnished  work  by  the  State  according  to 
their  capacities. 

But  while  the  individual  has  no  direct 
duty  to  furnish  work  for  the  unemployed,  is 
he  therefore  entirely  absolved  from  all  ob- 
ligation?   There  is  a  tendency,  I  know,  to 

102 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  103 

imagine  that  the  individual  has  no  responsi- 
bility for  what  the  State  does.  To  hang  an 
obligation  on  this  anonymous  hook  is  to  get 
rid  of  it  altogether.  However,  is  such  an 
attitude  justified  ? 

Perhaps  in  a  rigid  autocracy,  the  individ- 
ual citizen  may  salve  his  conscience  by 
throwing  all  the  odium  upon  the  govern- 
ment. But  in  a  republic  matters  are  differ- 
ent. No  such  Pilate-washing  of  the  hands 
will  absolve  the  voters.  For  the  State  will 
act  as  the  voters  dictate,  and  each  one  can 
say,  **I  am  the  State."  He  is  not  the  whole 
State,  but  he  is  a  part  of  it,  and  to  that 
extent  he  becomes  responsible  for  the  State's 
action. 

Of  course,  each  citizen  is  not  the  equal  of 
every  other.  While  no  one  has  more  than 
one  direct  vote,  some  have  more  influence 
and  power  than  others.  In  proportion  to 
his  power  he  will  be  judged.    In  private  con- 


104  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

versation,  with  tongue  or  pen,  or  in  any 
other  way  possible  to  him,  he  must  endeavor 
to  bring  about  the  fulfilment  of  this  duty 
to  the  unemployed.  A  perpetual  passing  on 
of  the  duty  will  get  nowhere.  Each  man  is 
his  brother's  keeper,  and  the  duty  of  the 
keeping  cannot  be  shifted  to  the  world  at 
large. 

Unemployment  is  sapping  the  strength 
and  undermining  the  efficiency  of  several 
millions  of  our  fellow  citizens.  Mere  indi- 
vidual efforts  at  finding  emplojrment  or  dis- 
pensing charity  are  futile  or  worse.  Even 
State  activity  in  the  form  of  insurance  and 
employment  bureaus  will  never  really  get 
down  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  There  must 
be  national  provision  of  the  opportunity  to 
work.  And  in  this  action  of  the  nation  we 
must  share.  Each  in  his  own  measure  must 
help  on  the  formation  of  the  public  opinion 
necessary  for  such  action,  so  that  some  day 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK  105 

there  will  be  no  men  standing  here  all  the 
day  idle  because  no  man  hath  hired  them. 

We  have  heard  much  about  the  develop- 
ment of  water  power  and  mineral  deposits. 
Capital  and  engineering  skill  have  been  lav- 
ished upon  projects  to  harness  the  forces  of 
nature  and  to  utilize  her  resources  to  the 
utmost.  Men  have  burrowed  into  the  bowels 
of  the  earth,  and  now  more  or  less  like  eagles 
they  are  invading  the  empyrean. 

So  eagerly  and  feverishly  did  men  attack 
this  conquest  of  nature  that  a  halt  had  to  be 
called.  Talk  of  development  gave  way  to 
some  extent  to  talk  of  conservation.  A  dis- 
tinction was  recognized  between  waste  and 
use.  Not  a  moment  too  soon  far-seeing 
statesmen  forced  a  consideration  of  pos- 
terity. 

When  are  we  going  to  understand  that  the 
noblest  and  most  important  task  for  any 
Jiation  is  the  development  and  the  conserva- 


106  THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 

tion  of  its  human  energy  ?  Great  inventions 
of  engines  and  automobiles,  the  digging  of 
canals,  the  harnessing  of  waterfalls,  the 
careful  utilization  of  all  formerly  waste 
products,  of  every  particle  of  matter  down 
to  the  hairs  in  pigs'  ears,  are  a  condemnation 
of  a  nation  that  allows  its  flesh-and-blood  en- 
gines, its  human  dynamos,  its  living  powers, 
to  stand  idly  rusting  out  an  existence  un- 
worthy of  men. 

We  need  a  movement  that  will  utilize  all 
the  muscles  and  brains  we  have,  that  will  de- 
velop our  manhood  to  its  full  capacity,  that 
will  make  it  a  crime  to  have  men  standing 
all  the  day  idle  because  society  cannot  put 
their  hands  to  work.  In  the  vineyard  of  the 
future  there  will  be  work  for  all — whole- 
some, dignified,  soul-building  work. 


UHlVERSllY  OF  SOUJIIUIU  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


"Life  is  too  short  for  reading  inferior  books," — Bryce 


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CONSUMERS  MS 
WAGE  EARNERS 

The  Ethics  of  Buying  Cheap 
By  J.  ELLIOT  ROSS,  Ph.D. 

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THESE  VITAL  PROBLEMS 
ARE  ANALYZED: 

Obligations  of  the  Consuming  Class 

What  Should  the  Individual  Consumer  Do? 

What  Is  a  Just  Employer? 

Theory  of  Industrial  Organization 

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